Perhaps most humiliating was the observation, made by both the New York Times and Entertainment Weekly, that “The Early Show’s” numbers were significantly worse than those posted for “CBS This Morning” in the same period last year. That program was the Tower Air of morning shows — no frills, no stars, no audience — while “The Early Show” launched last November with a new $30 million studio and all the hype the network could muster.

The list of suspects in this case is short. It is Gumbel’s show, and almost everyone pins its seeming failure on him, or at least on people’s perceptions of him. Clayson, a former L.A. correspondent for ABC, may have seemed out of her depth at first but now holds her own in interviews and hands-on features. (Her chemistry with Gumbel is almost nonexistent, though insiders say they really don’t dislike each other.) And the show’s formula — a bit of news, a bit of service, a bit of fluff — is no worse (or better) than its competitors.

Indeed, it’s a formula the two men helped perfect. Friedman was a producer on NBC’s “Today” when Gumbel was a co-host (with Jane Pauley), from 1981 to 1987, and then again in 1993-94 (when Gumbel was less successfully paired with Katie Couric). If you can’t blame the recipe, critics figure, you have to fault the chef — or the main ingredient.

In the interest of establishing what most of us intuited, Brill’s Content hired a research and consulting firm to conduct several focus groups testing viewers’ responses to Gumbel. The conclusion: People don’t like him. They find him arrogant, condescending, uncaring. They feel that if they were drowning, Gumbel would not throw them a life preserver — or, at the very least, would ask them what they had done to deserve it.

Conditional love is tough to sell before coffee.

Oddly enough, CBS knew this going in. Friedman’s pitch for the truculent host was met with all kinds of negative research within the network (most obviously his failure to take prime time by storm in CBS’s 1997 “Public Eye with Bryant Gumbel”). But Friedman persisted (armed with his own data), and Jervey makes a good case that it was his single-handed efforts that carried the day.

But such powers of persuasion won’t amount to a hill of coffee beans in the anemic, decaffeinated world of morning television if Gumbel doesn’t turn this boat around soon. For the record, both Friedman and CBS say they are committed to the show and its star for the long haul, and cite the slow growth of the Kate-and-Matt, Diane-and-Charlie pairings as evidence.

“I think a case can be made that the increased ratings for ABC in prime time translate into better ratings in the morning,” said an ad executive at another network. “If the last thing you watch at night is ABC, then the first thing that you watch in the morning is ABC.” And ABC, with the ubiquitous “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” rules prime time these days.

“Today” hosts Couric and Matt Lauer have achieved a kind of mythic status among their viewers (how else explain those people in the snow outside Rockefeller Plaza, Dr. Zhivago icicles dripping from their faces as they wave to folks back in Springfield?) But even the most dynamic of duos break up and try to move on. Witness Kathie Lee. Or, for that matter, Gumbel.

After watching “The Early Show” the past several mornings, I think I see something other than arrogance in Gumbel’s manner. Call it ennui, perhaps, rising at times to the pitch of despair. As he shuffles the papers before a commercial, touting an upcoming visit with George Clooney and Noah Wyle (“talking about their relationship on and off the screen”), he seems barely able to feign interest.

This may work for David Letterman (who’s actually been quite a bit peppier since his heart surgery — nothing like a brush with death to focus the mind!), but at 7 a.m. it’s disquieting. So much of morning programming is public-service oriented (here’s Donna Shalala promoting national “Kick Butts Day”) that someone needs to act like they care or we’ll all be committing suicide (while ignoring the 12 Warning Signs).

Tuesday found him interviewing, via satellite, a Dutch family that had been attacked on high seas by modern pirates. A 13-year-old boy, Willem Van Tuijl, was shot and paralyzed as his parents stood by, helpless. They then waited 20 hours for help.

The kid, stretched out on a hospital gurney, was the object of Gumbel’s admiration. “We’re all struck here by how remarkably poised young Willem is — how are the rest of you coping?”

“Not so good,” the parents confessed. For an empathic presence like Couric, this would have been a slam-dunk: Milk that moment, baby. What did you feel when you saw your son being shot? But Gumbel had eyes for the stoic 10-year-old.

“What’s been the worst part of this ordeal?” he asked him.

“It’s all been pretty similar,” says kid. “Nothing worse, nothing better.”

The boy’s mother, with great emotion, added, “Willem prayed with his heart that the pirates would change their lives.”

Gumbel merely nodded distractedly. (“A pirate’s life doesn’t sound so bad …”)

The desire to run away from it all (even when “it” includes a salary estimated at $5 million a year) seems a leitmotif in Gumbel’s interviews lately. His divorce from his long-estranged wife has been fodder for the tabloids and a running gag on Don Imus’ radio show. The show’s ratings are a matter of public record. And, according to the Brill’s article, he isn’t thriving on the fellowship of staff members, who are under strict orders to refrain from direct contact with the star.

On the street, outside the swanky new Central Park studios, even the bystanders were walking away …

On Wednesday, Gumbel talked to Gloria Reuben, who left her role as an HIV-positive nurse on “ER” and is now singing backup for Tina Turner. (Talk about career changes.)

“I jumped into the abyss of the unknown,” she told the anchor, who seemed to envy her chutzpah.

“If she were to say to you, ‘Come on the road with me,’ would you say no?” Reuben asked Gumbel, turning the tables on the interrogator.

“I’d say I can’t dance.”

Well, maybe it’s time to start learning. Just put one foot in front of the other — that’s it! — and start moving from side to side. And remember, you can’t really embarrass yourself if no one’s there to see you fall.

We take a look at some of the more egregious examples of stations trying to make this non-story work below.

In 2009, Katie Couric did a short segment on Friggatriskaidekaphobia, a phobia of Friday the 13th, which raises the question: Why do we need a name for something everyone has?

Then this year, Jeff Glor repeated Katie’s segment almost verbatim.

Also in 2009 was the amazing CBS exposé on the Friday the 13th Insane Clown Posse show. One of the most unintentionally funny segments in news history.

Other network news anchors took a different tack, asking if this could mean a bad day for the markets. But first: walking under a ladder!

 ABC  affiliates take a nontraditional route and go out to find some fun stuff to do on this bad luck holiday, because why not?

I’m starting to think the worst part of today is making it through corny TV spots.

It was not until she bumped into FOX News buddy, Greta Van Susteren, while walking away from the camera that Palin could think of a journalist to name. That’s right, “Greta Van Susteren is the most influential journalist!” she shouted. Hmm.

Palin appears at about 1:20 minutes in to the video:

Is the anonymous tipster just a classic decoy, designed to test the waters of public opinion before Couric and the network get down to negotiations? CBS News spokeswoman Sonya McNair said Sunday, “We have no announcements to make at this time. Until we do, we will continue to decline comment on rumor or speculation,” and Couric’s own spokesman likewise declined to comment.

But unlike so much of what comes down the rumor mill, the notion of Couric beating a hasty exit out of the Tiffany Network has the convincing ring of truth. Couric made history back in 2006 when she became the first woman to single-handedly anchor a nightly network news broadcast, a move considered unusual, largely because of her upbeat “Today” show personality.

And while Couric is a far more competent and knowledgeable journalist than she gets credit for – her effortless, idiocy-exposing interviews with Sarah Palin were a highlight of the 2008 election – the past few years have borne out that she’s also a newswoman whose distinctly human touch makes her better suited to the field than to the chair. Couric, unlike the self-deprecating, slow-jamming-to-the-news Brian Williams possesses a quickness and a warmth historically unique in the troika of network talking heads. She’s more like the always-up-for-getting-emotional Anderson Cooper, a man who shines best when firing questions at interviewees or pulling together impassioned reports from the scene of a breaking story. And it’s hard to imagine Diane Sawyer unselfconsciously dispensing wet willies in an “investigative report” on shaking the sillies out.

So where would Couric, who was chastised by David Letterman last month for copping to the fact that she’s “figuring out what I want to do and figuring out the future,” go next? Despite Letterman’s insistence that “Once you take that chair, that’s what you do,” Couric, who cheerfully countered, “Is that CBS law?” has a number of possibilities. She admitted in an interview for next Sunday’s New York Times that she and Jeff Zucker “talk a lot and, yes, we’ve been discussing the possibilities” of a talk show for 2012 that would be a place “for smart conversation.”

Couric has, for her entire career, had to figure out how to deftly wear the persona that her audience responds to – that friendly disposition that helped make her a news star – while fighting off the criticism that an anchor must resemble God in full commandment-delivering mode. In her Times interview, she dismisses the charge of not possessing gravitas by calling the word “Latin for ‘testicles,’ by the way” and admitting she’s bristled at the “sexist undertone” of being categorized as “perky.” “It meant shallow and cute, but not somebody who had any depth,” she says.

Depth doesn’t have to come at the expense of humanity – far from it. If and when she leaves, it won’t be with her perky tail between her legs. The real question is why evening news viewers are still so reluctant to accept someone a little looser delivering the big stories of the day. And though Couric admits, “We probably would have been better off playing it a little safer,” it seems she’s ready to redefine “better off.” She certainly seemed to be dropping a big clue to her next move when she told Hemispheres magazine this month that, “I sometimes miss the connection I had with ‘Today’ Show viewers, because I was very much myself. I could be spontaneous. People felt like they knew me because they sort of did.” In her long career in the public eye, viewers have indeed come to know Couric – and not as someone who couldn’t take the “CBS Evening News” out the dumpster, but as a competent journalist with a distinctive set of talents. That’s why to those of us who admire what she does so well, the idea that she might be “better off” talking to people instead of dispensing headlines isn’t news at all.

After those first few weeks, the “CBS Evening News” settled into third place in the ratings and is well behind leader Brian Williams at NBC’s “Nightly News” and second-place Diane Sawyer at ABC’s “World News.”

No departure date has been set for Couric. Her CBS News contract expires on June 4.

“We’re having ongoing discussions with Katie Couric,” said CBS News spokeswoman Sonya McNair on Sunday. “We have no announcements to make at this time. Until we do, we will continue to decline comment on rumor or speculation.”

Said Matthew Hiltzik, Couric’s spokesman: “Ditto.”

Still, discussions are already under way about who will replace Couric on the evening newscast. Russ Mitchell, Scott Pelley and Harry Smith are among the internal CBS candidates, and new CBS News Chairman Jeff Fager is also expected to look outside the company.

Couric, who was on vacation last week, was reluctant to talk about her future when she appeared on fellow CBS host David Letterman’s show on March 22. “Once you take that anchor chair, that’s what you do,” Letterman told her.

“Really?” Couric answered.

“Look at Walter Cronkite, look at Tom Brokaw, look at Brian Williams, look at Peter Jennings, look at all these people,” Letterman said. “They get in it, they saddle up and they ride into the sunset.”

Couric smiled widely and said she loved doing the evening news and was proud of her work, but made no future commitments. Despite the ratings problems, the “CBS Evening News” won the Edward R. Murrow Award as best newscast in 2008 and 2009. Couric’s interview with then-Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in 2008 was a memorable moment in the campaign after Palin couldn’t or wouldn’t answer Couric’s question about books or magazines she regularly read.

Even with those high points, broadcast news economics had changed markedly since she signed on with CBS and her reported $15 million a year salary became increasingly hard to justify for a third-place telecast. Fager, the “60 Minutes” executive producer, was installed as CBS News chairman two months ago and new executives frequently like to put their own stamp on newscasts.

Rome Hartman, Couric’s first executive producer at the “CBS Evening News,” said that while Couric’s tenure clearly didn’t work out as well as CBS hoped, “I don’t think it’s right to think of it as, or call it, a failure.”

For the first time in many years, a network tried to increase the number of viewers watching the evening news instead of trying to steal a bigger slice out of an ever-shrinking pie, said Hartman, editor of “BBC World News America.”

“There are people who love Katie and those who don’t love her and that was a factor,” he said. “But it was the overall dynamics. There was a rock that we couldn’t move and I don’t think it would have mattered who we would have put in there.”

Although Couric will leave the evening news, she might not leave CBS. The CBS Corp. is a powerful force in the syndication business as owners of “Dr. Phil” and “Judge Judy,” and the upcoming departure in May of Oprah Winfrey will leave a huge void in the talk show marketplace. Through CBS-owned stations, the company could give a big head start to a Couric show. Due to the sales calendar, such a show would not likely begin until fall 2012.

A syndication deal with CBS is seen as the only possibility that Couric would continue as evening news anchor on a temporary basis past June, if she were to agree to stay during an extended search for her successor.

Other chief contenders for Couric’s services are NBC and Telepictures. NBC is her old home, but is not considered a big player in the talk show business. It tried and failed to launch a show for Jane Pauley, one of Couric’s predecessors on “Today.” Telepictures is bigger in the marketplace, producing “Ellen” and a new show with Anderson Cooper debuting in the fall, both of which could take potential time slots away from Couric.

Each of the companies has related news divisions where Couric could have some visibility before starting a talk show — at CBS, NBC or CNN, through Telepictures.

The personality that Couric could be expected to readily display on the talk show circuit could be seen last week in a video posted by aol.com. Couric, who has actively encouraged Americans to get colonoscopies since her husband died of colon cancer, took a humorous look at undergoing her own test. Her doctor jokingly noted that he had found a Batman doll while looking at Couric’s internal organs.