When the CBS Evening News quickly returned to its third place rank after the debut of Katie Couric, the higher-ups got nervous and started hacking away at new ideas, replacing them with what they deemed real news.

Here’s the actual problem. It’s not that Katie has bad ideas. They’re great ideas. The problem is the time limit. Katie’s experience hosting The Today Show’s daily marathon qualifies her to run the first evening news show to go for the full 6 p.m. hour.

Then bring back the infamous “Free Speech” segment, which was a great idea not because it had a huge amount of news value, but because it generated buzz.

For example, before Rush Limbaugh made his one-minute free speech, he talked at length about it on his radio show. Sean Hannity did the same before his appearance. The right-wingers actually felt their voice was getting through.

The show has to be a must-TiVo. Free speech helped make it just that.

Looks like the higher-ups also complained when Katie spent nine minutes of the show talking with Michael J. Fox about being accused of faking his shaking. I saw the interview and it was a rare intersection of pop culture and politics. The show had an exclusive interview on a topic being discussed all over the country. Katie’s instinct to go for nine minutes was on target.

Higher-ups wouldn’t complain about nine minutes if they had an hour to play with.