Deadline reports that the rumoured news are now finally official: Yahoo! and Katie Couric have inked a deal.
The news of Couric leaving ABC News broke just last week, on November 22, practically confirming the rumor that had been going around for months that the TV veteran would be joining Yahoo! sooner rather than later.
Marissa Mayer, Yahoo!’s CEO, finally confirmed it yesterday, writing a statement on Tumblr that read that Katie will be joining the Web giant in 2014 and will act as their global anchor, leading “a growing team of global correspondents who will report on live world events, anchor groundbreaking interviews with major newsmakers and thought leaders, and much more.”
Mayer’s ratification also said that Katie was “the perfect choice to anchor Yahoo! News and the whole Yahoo! Network” because of her “depth of experience, her intellectual curiosity, and her charisma.”
For her part, Katie Couric justified to Deadline her choice to move to Yahoo! and therefore working on the web, saying “I’ve done pretty much everything else in television up until now — I hosted the Today Show, I anchored the CBS Evening News and I’ve done a syndicated show. If you look at the next frontier where content is going and how people are consuming it, it is in the digital space. I like the idea of unlimited real estate, doing interviews that are interesting to a global audience.”
Katie left her ABC News contract a few months early but says she and the network are not parting ways completely, since ABC News and Yahoo even have an online partnership deal. “As ABC News has said, it wouldn’t be surprising if they would utilize my content on their platform,” added Couric.
The veteran will continue hosting her Disney-ABC sindicated show, Katie, until the end of the season, as was agreed with ABC. A final decision on whether that show will be renewed is expected within the next month, although all signs point to a cancellation.