SHE is a veteran at covering the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, has appeared in an Austin Powers film and played herself in an episode of Cheers. Now Katie Couric is about to fill the most prestigious seat in American journalism as solo anchor of the CBS Evening News.

For CBS, whose ratings for its evening news show have sunk from 16 million in the early 1980s to about 6 million today, the move is risky.

When she starts her new job on September 5, Ms Couric will be the first solo woman anchor of an American weekday evening news show. She will also be the highest-paid anchor of any gender, with a salary of $15 million (£8 million) and a $10 million promotional campaign worthy of a run for the White House.

In Britain solo women newscasters have been a familiar sight since Angela Rippon began reading the news on the BBC in the 1970s. But in America men still dominate the news, and many argue that Ms Couric, who is 49 and single (her husband died of cancer), is a far from obvious candidate to take a position once held by Walter Cronkite, a newsman often credited with helping to end the Vietnam War.

Ms Couric’s other predecessors include Edward R. Murrow, who relentlessly criticised the “Red scare” tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s.

Indeed, some regard Ms Couric’s appointment as the end of the entire news anchor tradition, with the National Review declaring: “She stands on the shoulders of giants as the whole edifice sinks in quicksand.”

Ms Couric did not help herself by suggesting that she would refuse to go to Iraq. “As a single parent with two children, that’s something I won’t be doing,” she said, before getting the CBS job. Ms Couric has since argued that the quote was out of context.

In the press release of her appointment, CBS emphasised her coverage of the Gulf War and her experience interviewing presidents. But since her tearful on-air farewell in April after 15 years on the NBC news show Today — “I really feel as if we’ve become friends through the years,” she told viewers — it is Ms Couric’s reputation for melding news with entertainment that has preoccupied opinion columnists. The gossip website Gawker.com said that the CBS Evening News will be The Katie Couric Show (with news).

A poll released this week by the Pew Research Centre revealed that the qualities many Americans associated with Ms Couric were “fluffy”, “cute”, “bubbly” and “perky” — none of which was used to describe her male rivals, Brian Williams, of NBC, and Charles Gibson, of ABC. The first most-commonly used description of Ms Couric was “good” and the second was “liberal”.

Within CBS there has been predictable scoffing by fellow reporters at Ms Couric’s appointment. One, who did not want to be named, told The Times: “There is some concern that things will lighten up too much. Look at the ad campaign. It’s very soft, it’s almost as though she’s out of focus. At the same time people are hopeful that she’ll do a strong job and boost ratings. [CBS News is] a dying institution. Let’s hope she gets people watching.”

Joanna Coles, the editor of Marie Claire magazine in New York, described the appointment of Ms Couric as a brilliant move. She said: “Katie Couric brings a degree of fabulousness to the evening newsdesk that no male anchor ever can. She has just as much hard news experience as the men.”

MONEY TALKS

Anne Robinson is thought to be the best-paid woman on British TV, believed to be worth £60 million

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