[UPDATE: Today (Tuesday) on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, I review CBS's new morning program -- including clips from today's show. Points for timeliness! - And for including clips of a fun moment or two from NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams. - DB]

By watching its premiere telecast, you can tell much more about a news program's immediate weaknesses than its potential strengths. Chemistry and reputation take time to build, but groan-inducing mistakes, missteps and poor editorial judgments are there from the start.

In Monday's inaugural two-hour broadcast of CBS This Morning, that network's latest reboot of a morning-show franchise, co-hosts Charlie Rose, Gayle King and Erica Hill took what Rose, in his closing, referred to as the first steps in a journey of a million miles.

That may be an overly optimistic itinerary -- but in this first outing from a show built around the idea that serious news is good news, CBS This Morning indeed got out of the gate without a stumble...

Its claim to being the "serious" morning-news alternative is a bit shaky at times. Day 1 of this new CBS experiment (7 a.m. ET; check local listings) included segments on Royals correspondent Victoria Arbiter talking about Princess Kate's 30th birthday, for example, and guest Melissa Etheridge talking about the music and appeal of Adele.

But the show also led with Rose's interview, via satellite, with Newt Gingrich, one day before the New Hampshire primary, and Rose and Hill debriefing CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley on his 60 Minutes story, from the night before, which included an ambush interview of an apparently shady doctor involved in what clearly lied like a stem-cell scam.

Ambush interviews, of course, are nothing new. Neither is 60 Minutes, which launched in 1968, and remains the oldest currentlly running show in prime time. Mike Wallace specialized in ambush interviews decades ago, and Pelley upholds the tradition nicely.

When he comes onto CBS This Morning to advance and deconstruct the piece, fielding questions from colleagues on a sister show on his own network, he's doing the same thing White House correspondents Bill Plante and Norah O'Donnell are doing when they're talking about the latest book on Barack and Michelle Obama. They're focusing on the news, sure -- but they're also drawing focus to themselves, in a canny bit of cross-promotion.

But there's nothing at all wrong with that.

It's done all the time, on another recent addition to the "serious" news program genre, NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams -- and usually in a very satisfying fashion. You can learn as much, and often do, by listening to Ted Koppel talk with Williams, after his report on Iraq and Afghanistan, as you can from the piece itself.

Even though Rose had a timely news "get" with Gingrich, not much emerged from it -- and the best piece of the day Monday was from Pelley, whose full-length 60 Minutes piece the night before was even better. An interview with Julianna Margulies, with the entire troika of CBS This Morning anchors seated around the same table, generated little. But there was no cooking, no genial joshing, no 12 tips to (fill in the blank).

All those absences, in the overall scheme of things, are definite pluses.

CBS, to its credit, already has four substantial, "serious" news programs on its schedule. There's 60 Minutes, still the best newsmagazine since See It Now. There's the CBS Evening News, now more somber, and more watchable and consistent, in its post-Katie Couric era. There's Face the Nation, which Bob Schieffer has turned into a fine Sunday addition of late, particularly with his smart closing essays.

And finally, there's the beloved, perfectly pitched Sunday Morning, now hosted by Charles Osgood, which is like a Sunday newspaper -- more patient, filling and varied than its daily counterpart.

In a dozen years, that newspaper simile may not even work, because few will know what a newspaper is, or was. But the concept of being more serious is a smart one - literally. It doesn't say every report will be somber and full of gravitas -- just that the programs won't pander, and will exercise taste as well as restraint and judgment.

But it doesn't mean you can't have fun. Last week's Jan. 2 edition of Rock Center with Brian Williams featured a hastily assembled feature on the street-cleaners who clear all the trash from Times Square after the ball falls on New Year's Eve. (Hastily assembled, in this context, is a necessity, not a criticism.)

The piece won me over right after the ball dropped, and the next image shown was a team of street cleaners marching towards the camera, ready to start. The music on the soundtrack was the superbly chosen Wilson Pickett version of "In the Midnight Hour" ("I'm gonna wait till the midnight hour / when there's no one else around...").

I would have thought that was untoppable -- but two of the guys with brooms topped it, by doing an a cappella, slightly revised version of "New York, New York" while merrily, and musically, going about their duties:

"I want to wake up," they sang, "in the city that never sweeps..."

Rock Center is on the right track. And so, it seems, is CBS This Morning, which seemed to believe you could, indeed, be light without being lightweight.

The inaugural day at CBS This Morning even included a nod to Dick Van Dyke, who had been the host of CBS's The Morning Show (as it was called then) way, way back in 1955. Reading the news for Van Dyke back then? Walter Cronkite, still several years away from anchoring The CBS Evening News.

With that report, CBS proved it had a very long tradition in that time slot -- just not a successful one.

NBC's Today, on the other hand, celebrates its 60th anniversary later this week, on Jan. 14.

That's a number, and a program, that's guaranteed to get googols (or at least Googles) of built-in attention this week, so CBS This Morning won't be in the spotlight for long. But that's okay.

Charlie Rose is right. With luck, there's a long journey ahead. Focusing on one week, like focusing on one show, would be making a mistake.

It's pretty clear, though, that as journeys go, CBS This Morning has chosen the right path...