Couric to CBS, First Female to Solo-Anchor Evening News
After months of speculation, it's official: broadcast journalist Katie Couric will be leaving NBC's Today Show at the end of May to anchor the CBS Evening News. As noted yesterday in the Washington Post, three women -- Barbara Walters at ABC, Connie Chung at CBS and Elizabeth Vargas, at ABC's "World News Tonight" -- have co-anchored alongside men. This makes Couric the first solo female anchor of a weekday network newscast. Fishbowl DC has the low-down in their Television section.
Couric has some strong District roots. Born in Arlington and a graduate of the University of Virginia, Couric got her start as a desk assistant at ABC News' Washington bureau. After stints at CNN and at a station in Miami, she returned to the Beltway and reported for WRC-TV, Washington's NBC affiliate. The December 2003 edition of the Washingtonian noted that her gig involved "covering murders and fires."
The New Yorker's Ken Auletta did a piece in August 2005 titled The Dawn Patrol: The Curious Rise of Morning Television, and the Future of Network News. When mentioning her move to NBC in April of 1991, Auletta notes, "Couric insisted that she get an equal share of the news maker interviews, as Barbara Walters once did. “Not to sound too Helen Reddy-ish,” she recalls, “but I felt like I had an obligation as a woman, and for the women who were watching, to have an equal role on the show, and not a subservient role.” Though more well-known for her early morning TV gig for a decade and a half, Couric did cut her teeth on straightforward news reporting.
Rumors abound that NBC is courting The View's Meredith Vieira as well as NBC's White House Correspondent Campbell Brown. Replacements aside, it will be interesting to see Couric and her toothy grin make the jump from a program that showcases recipes and demos household gadgets, to the 'hard news' stories of the nation's third-ranked evening newscast.