Yahoo Hired Katie Couric, but Is She Worth the Money?

If Katie Couric is consistent in one way, it’s that she’s expensive. Yahoo!’s decision to hire the veteran newscaster to be its new Global Anchor, partially taking her away from ABC, where she has an estimated $40 million contract, is a decidedly bold move for a company that’s been making a number of bold moves in recent months. The question though is, is Katie Couric’s marquee status worth the money?

Couric is good at her job, there’s no question about that. But TV news requires more than just intelligence and reportorial skills; the most successful hosts also have a charisma that make you want to watch them. That’s something Couric has struggled with ever since she left the Today Show to anchor the CBS Evening News in 2006 for a $15 million-a-year paycheck. At the time, media analysts expected her to add star power and help the station expand its audience in the face of a dwindling pool of rapidly aging evening news viewers. But that never happened. Instead, Couric was criticized for being too informal for such a serious program, and viewers’ reaction to her were tepid, at best. She left CBS in 2011 and returned to her daytime talk show roots in 2012 with Katie, on ABC, where she is now also an ABC News correspondent.