"CBS Evening News with Katie Couric" debuts

I had hoped to watch Katie Couric's debut live -- meaning at 3:30 p.m. PDT -- on the CBS News Web site as it streamed her East Coast broadcast. But life happened, and I ended up watching it on the same site at 9:30 p.m. -- three hours after it aired on the West Coast and six hours after it aired originally back East.

So the best thing about the new CBS News for me so far is the time shift allowed by the video streaming on the Web.

As for the broadcast itself, what was good and bad had little obvious connection to the (alleged) $15-million-a-year anchor. But she's the reason I watched, so here are a couple of observations about her debut.

Couric seemed to try very hard to be accessible and neighborly, with such useless lines as "As many of you know, next Monday is the fifth anniversary of 9/11" (or some such -- I'm paraphrasing more than quoting exactly here). As many of us know? Not all of us? Which of us? Why divide the viewers into those who are in the know and those who are oblivious? Why not: Next Monday is the fifth anniversary of 9/11 -- a simple statement of fact to orient us to her next point?

She also pitched the CBS News Web site repeatedly, as a kind of claim to with-it-ness -- anchor as Web star. She invited viewers to submit possible sign-off lines -- thereby subverting whatever authorial signature effect such a signoff might have to some kind of populist participatory sloganeering. It tells us something about Dan Rather than he chose to exhort "Courage" at the end of each newscast. It tells us something entirely different about Katie Couric that she is outsourcing her signature.

Finally, she concluded the broadcast by saying, again in a bid to be accessible and neighborly, something to the effect of "I hope to see you tomorrow night." Sorry, Ms. Couric, it's a one-way see-through mirror. We see you, but we're invisible to you -- except in the imaginary space you are trying to create to comfort us all.