When is katie couric leaving cbs

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger? Couric also discussed the move during an appearance on Today Tuesday morning , telling former colleague Al Roker that there was a "real culture clash" when she joined CBS. I don't think people internally really accepted me, and I thought we were much further along when it came to sexism. She said when she left Today , she "thought America was really ready for a female anchor of the evening news. People Exclusive. Executive Editor, Television.

Has there ever been as much media speculation about a television news anchor's career plans. Katie Couric made official what the rest of the industry already knew: She is leaving her evening news anchor chair.

In what turned out to be one of the worst-kept secrets in television, the anchor said Tuesday that she will depart after five years at CBS.

What the paper didn't go out of its way to say was that there had just been a fairly high-profile election, which should have increased interest in Couric's program. It didn't ask why Couric's ratings had risen only after the voting had ended. Similarly, keeping one's ratings "on par" with the previous year when this particular year had featured the most cacophonous election in a generation, complete with a historic financial meltdown, isn't much of an achievement.

That was more than two years ago, and Couric's ratings have occasionally gone up but have mostly gone down, and always stayed in a distant third place. Ratings leader NBC as a rule of thumb has a viewership about 50 percent higher than Couric's.

In April , Couric's show had the network's worst week ever , with an average of 5. In June , the show had scorched that dismal benchmark. And a year after that it did it again, reaching an all-time low of 4. Couric's numbers in the demo—that is to say, in the cruel economics of TV advertising, which focuses on non-senior citizens—was fewer than 1.

So good press helps. But that doesn't work inside a company, particularly a public one like CBS. It's worth noting how damaging Couric's tenure has been for CBS. The network is part of a stand-alone company much different from the corporate homes of the news divisions of NBC or CNN. As the Journal noted, its news operation's profits are much more integral to its company's bottom line.

The Couric hire marginalized the CBS news division and drained its funds. With Couric's salary the network could have hired literally actual journalists to report news for viewers. He has tackled every assignment from interviewing astronauts on the International Space Station to prison inmates training service dogs for military veterans.

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