It's not often that you get genuine news at a press tour - it's not often you get any news at a press tour - but I'm reasonably certain we got some about half an hour ago: Katie Couric and Sean McManus, CBS News chief, disputed the reports that she's leaving after the inauguration. "There are no plans to part company any time soon," she said via satellite from New York.
Now...you can be cynical, and you can be skeptical, and you can be anything you like. You can also carefully parse the words "any time soon." But I do find it intriguing that both would use such a public forum to so pointedly deny the many reports of a post-inauguration split once again. McManus has sorta debunked the reports in other press interviews, but this seems to me KC's strongest denunciation to date. "I'm very committed to the program and the product." Echoed McManus, "this is not a discussion at CBS or CBS News."
As Your's Truly has reported before, there are reasons why she could/should stay. One, it would cost CBS a vast sum to buy out the balance off her contract, and there would certainly be no guarantee that her replacement would do any better. Two, she has no apparent motivation to move on either (meaning, no obvious gig, unless Larry King is pushed aside, which seems kinda hard to believe at this point.) And three, the program IS actually pretty good (even if it doesn't have a correspondent based in Baghdad any more.) Credit due to people like Paul Friedman and others who are working behind the scenes, but credit due to Katie too. The numbers are dreadful, but they were dreadful under Dan Rather too. (Are there degrees of "dreadful...?" Just asking...)
So, we now await the meaning of "any time soon."