MUMBAI: US media conglomerate Disney/ABC Television Group (DATG) has signed a multi-year, multi-platform agreement with journalist and television personality Katie Couric to host and produce her own nationally syndicated talk show and to join the ABC News team.
The programme will be distributed by Disney/ABC Domestic Television and will premiere in September 2012.
Couric, the former “Today” co-anchor who was most recently anchor and managing editor of the ‘CBS Evening News with Katie Couric’, a ‘60 Minutes’ correspondent and host of the weekly online interview series, @katiecouric, will be reunited with Jeff Zucker, who will be an executive producer on the yet-to-be-named syndicated series, which will be based in New York and produced in conjunction with Disney/ABC.
In addition to hosting the new syndicated program, Couric will join the ABC News team, contributing to all programmes and platforms. Beginning this summer, Couric will anchor specials, contribute interviews, participate in special events coverage and bring her many talents to bear on some of the most important and interesting stories of the day.
DATG president Anne Sweeney said, “Katie Couric is one of television’s iconic figures and we are thrilled to have forged such an exciting partnership with her. We look forward to having Katie join the best News team in the business, and to working with her to create a dynamic and successful talk show franchise.”
Couric said, “I’m very happy to be returning to the network where I began my career as a desk assistant in 1979. It is tremendously exciting to have the creative freedom to develop my own show with Anne Sweeney, the Disney/ABC TV Group and Jeff, and to contribute to such a vibrant, innovative news division.”
The eight ABC Owned stations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Houston, Raleigh/Durham and Fresno, which represent nearly 23 per cent of the nation’s TV households, have already cleared the new show in the 3 pm time slot.
As part of the announcement, the network is set to return the last hour of its Daytime network block to affiliates no earlier than September 2012, but continues to support “General Hospital,” and the plans to launch “The Chew” in September of this year and “The Revolution” in January 2012.
