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Katie Couric, Thinking About Tomorrow
Couric and Lauer were on the air on Sept. 11, 2001, and believed, with most of the country, that it was some kind of bizarre accident when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. When the second plane struck, Lauer says, "I remember vividly looking at Katie and Katie looking at me. It was a very emotional moment. The next couple of hours were very hard to get through. We were New Yorkers, Americans, our families were worried about us, and we worked in a landmark building. We went purely on instinct."
Bell recalls Couric calling in from vacation and volunteering to go to Louisiana and Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina. In one case, she helped a father reunite with his family. "Big players play in big games," says Bell, a former sports producer. "She just has an insatiable curiosity about things."
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Katie Couric After 15 years on NBC's morning "Today" show, Katie Couric changes networks to anchor the "CBS Evening News." |
Fifteen years in the limelight have made Couric a gossip-column fixture, her every date or charity outing photographed and chronicled. But for two months she has been in a strange limbo. As NBC has choreographed her big send-off, it is also publicizing the woman who is taking her star power, and $15-million-a-year contract, to CBS.
"Obviously it's a little awkward when someone is going to work for the competition," Zucker says. "But there's no acrimony here, and a great deal of fondness for Katie. The fact is, she's been an incredibly important part of 'Today' and NBC. . . . I think even she is sometimes embarrassed by the amount of attention that she and similar people get in these positions."
NBC executives say they are well positioned in the morning, having hired Meredith Vieira from "The View" the day after Couric confirmed the rumors that she would be Bob Schieffer's successor. "Good Morning America," meanwhile, will be grappling with its own transition. Gibson's move to evening duty dissolves his successful partnership with Diane Sawyer, who will be paired with co-host Robin Roberts.
"We've all lived with the knowledge that one day Katie would leave," says Lauer, who signed a five-year, $13-million-a-year contract with "Today" soon after Couric's announcement. "The show tends to be bigger than the sum of its parts."
Couric, who assumes the CBS anchor duties in September, also has her eye on another program, "60 Minutes," where she plans to contribute a half-dozen pieces a year. Television newsmagazines have not been faring well lately, she says, "and here I was given an opportunity to go to the best and longest-running and most respected newsmagazine. That was really appealing."
But as Couric well knows, her reputation will rise or fall on her evening showdown with Gibson and her longtime NBC colleague Brian Williams. "Just to be able to help shape an evening newscast is a great opportunity," she says. As an aging genre, says Couric, "I think they're probably ripe for a little retooling."
As a single mother of girls 14 and 10, stepping into an unaccustomed role -- the face of a news division -- Couric is periodically reminded that she is more than just a famous journalist switching jobs.
"I am surprised by the reaction from women -- total strangers -- who come up to me and say, 'We're so proud of you, congratulations, this is great for women.' You kind of forget that the evening news has been a bastion of maleness for as long as it has. It's been surprising and overwhelming."
