Katie Couric's expected move from evening news to afternoon talk might come too late to anoint her the next Oprah Winfrey.
Couric, 54, seems increasingly likely to give up the CBS Evening Newswhen her contract ends in early June after five years at the anchor desk. But she is being courted by NBC, CBS and Warner Bros.' Telepictures arm to host a daytime talk show that would start in fall 2012. Each would offer a continuing presence on affiliated newscasts or prime-time specials. (Telepictures parent Time Warner owns CNN.)
Though her spokesman Matthew Hiltzik says Couric "has not made a decision," Couric herself tells the New York Times Magazine, in an interview running Sunday, that she's discussing a new show with Today producer (and former NBC Universal CEO) Jeff Zucker that she hopes would offer "smart conversation."
But talk-show success will depend heavily on the stations and time periods she commands, says Bill Carroll, who advises local stations on syndicated programming for Katz Television Group. Just ask another beloved former Today anchor: Jane Pauley's 2004 daytime show bombed and was canceled after one season.
With a launch in the thick of a presidential election campaign, interest in an issues-oriented show could be high. But in another respect, Couric's timing is off, Carroll says: With Winfrey departing this May, successors to key late-afternoon time slots have already been claimed by Dr. Oz, Ellen DeGeneres, local newscasts and CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, who starts his own syndicated talk show this fall.
If Cooper doesn't succeed, "that will at least cause some questions" about Couric's viability, Carroll says, though it also would open some schedule slots. And if expanded local newscasts perform adequately next season, "stations will be looking to that option, rather than what would be an expensive long-term commitment to Katie Couric."
"Can she succeed? Sure," he says. "But we're going through a period of shift. In the same way Oprah was a game-changer, Oprah leaving is a game-changer. The process begins this fall and then we'll see what the landscape is."
Meanwhile, the CBS newscast she'd exit remains mired in third place, averaging 6.4 million viewers this year, and has fallen further behind No. 2 ABC, with a gap of more than 2 million viewers. Combined, 23.2 million viewers watched the three evening network newscasts in November, down from 27 million in 2005 and 32 million in 2000, according to Nielsen figures.
"The total pool of network evening news viewers is just shrinking structurally," says Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. "But how that pool is allocated depends on who is in the three anchor chairs," he says, noting that Bob Schieffer, Charlie Gibson and — very recently —Diane Sawyer have gained share for their networks. "Basically, for much of the last 25 years, the winner of the network news competition is the anchorperson who lost fewer viewers than his or her rivals."
The odds-on favorite to replace Couric is 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley, who joined CBS in 1989. But it won't make much difference, says TV-news analyst Andrew Tyndall, who blames a "structural weakness" in CBS' affiliate lineup, with local stations delivering weak news lead-ins.
"Her whole career at CBS can be described as nothing more or less than mismanaged expectations," he says. "There was all this hype around her that she was going to come in as a savior, and that reflects a misunderstanding of the environment that network news is in."
Even CBS chief Leslie Moonves acknowledged as much last fall in a speech at the University of Texas, saying the once standard-bearing evening newscasts are increasingly irrelevant. "People are getting the news elsewhere," he said.
Which might explain why he added that her $15 million-a-year contract "will be the last big deal of that kind ever done" for that time slot, Moonves predicted. "Those days are over."
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