I haven’t been a regular prime-time evening news viewer in years. Decades, it seems. Katie Couric isn’t going to change that. I’ll tune in to see Rush Limbaugh on Thursday, and then tune out after that. Rush talked about his role on the CBS Evening News this afternoon and why he accepted Couric’s invitation:

Early in August I was approached by Ms. Couric herself, and she told me of a segment that they were going to do in their new newscast called free speech, freedom of speech. “Free Speech” I think it is, and every night there will be a commentator that will get between a minute and 15 to a minute and 30 depending on how competent and good they are. I got the full minute 30, and on Friday they’re going to do comedians, and they’re going to do this every night, and some nights it’s going to be a Wal-Mart shopper. Some nights it’ll be a professional academic. Some nights it’ll be a pundit. It’ll be full of people that you know or you don’t know. They hope they’re going to, you know, run the gamut with this, and Katie asked me if I would consider appearing on the first week, and I said, “Yeah, but my experience with these kinds of things, Katie, leads me to ask you for certain promises, conditions,” and I got those promises and conditions. They were met.

So last Thursday, we taped it in the EIB Building in Manhattan after the radio show, and it wasn’t until I guess Saturday that I found out it actually is going to run on Thursday. That’s the plan now. I don’t know who’s doing tonight. I don’t know who’s doing tomorrow night. I’ve heard that Clinton’s done one, that McCain’s going to do one, Giuliani. I don’t know about anybody else. I have no clue who else is doing this, other than — and I don’t know any more than you do. I only know that I did mine and it will air sometime in the newscast on Thursday, and a lot of you, I think, are a little shortsighted on this, and I responded to some of the e-mails over the weekend questioning my loyalty to the movement, questioning my sanity, questioning my brains.

When the Drive-By Media offers 90 seconds of a 22-minute program — an opportunity for me to express our views, my views, without debate, without somebody coming on afterwards to refute it — and that’s part of the feature, by the way. They’ve assured me and everybody they talked to that you do your piece on X night, the next night’s not going to be somebody responding or replying, although I have heard that George Clooney has already asked for equal time (laughing) to respond to me. Now, I’m told that’s not going to happen, and certainly it’s not going to happen the next night. I didn’t mention any names in my piece. I’m not going to tell you what it’s about, because I don’t want to give anything of it away, but just believe me on this, folks: It is our views, and they’re pretty hard-hitting, and they’re going to be on the CBS Evening News, and they haven’t appeared — these kinds of views haven’t appeared much — on the CBS Evening News or the ABC World News Tonight or the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.

***

From MRC: Meet the Real Katie Couric.

Flashback: A trip down Katie’s liberal media lane.