How would you fix a problem in TV News? Say, the Couric Evening News? Before you send in your running order and personnel tweaks, your graphics ideas and story suggestions remember you are a journalist not a network boss. This is how bosses think (my italics):

Karmazin, the former chief of CBS (CBS), was asked for his thoughts on how to fix the once legendary but now flagging CBS Evening News. “What would I do with the CBS Evening News? I challenged everybody when I was there. I said, ‘Let’s eliminate it.’ You know, I mean who cares?” he says. “The issue was that that became impractical because if you’re a network, you’ve got to have a news organization.”

His real answer is no less provocative. “What I would have done, I tried to do, and that was buy CNN,” he says. “Time Warner (TWX) should own Cablevision (CVC). And if, in fact, they were to buy Cablevision, they would have needed some money. And I don’t think CNN is a core asset for Time Warner. CNN could have been a cheap way of doing the evening news. I would say certainly one of my biggest disappointments was not being able to buy CNN.”

Karmazin was stroking a white Persian cat as he spoke…