Today, CBS announced that CBS News VP Paul Friedman has been promoted to Senior VP, effective immediately. TVNewser has the reasoning behind the decision, according to CBS News chieftain, Sean McManus.

This is a recognition that Paul has become my principal deputy, even beyond his primary responsibilities for hard news coverage, the CBS Evening News and our Special Events and political coverage," Sean McManus says. "I look forward to working with him even more closely as we continue to aggressively rebuild and move CBS News forward."

Which is just a fancy way of saying "Not only are we permanently locked into third place, but we just pulled in our lowest ratings ever. But with Katie Couric raking in $60 million, and the money we spent replacing our exec producer with Rick Kaplan, this was pretty much the best we could do."

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