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Meredith Vieira to Replace Katie Couric at 'Today' NewsMax.com Wires NEW YORK -- A day after Katie Couric announced she was leaving for CBS, NBC has chosen Meredith Vieira as Matt Lauer's new partner on the "Today" show. NBC scheduled a news conference for Thursday afternoon to announce its new "Today" host, and a person close to the negotiations who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed that it was Vieira. The person insisted on anonymity because the announcement had not been made. NBC chose Vieira over several internal candidates, including weekend "Today" anchor Campbell Brown, newswoman Natalie Morales and "Today" newsreader Ann Curry. Brown and Morales had subbed for Couric on "Today" while she was on vacation at the end of last month. With her background as a former "60 Minutes" correspondent and co-host on "The View," Vieira has a background to match a morning show host's need to do serious news and also interview Hollywood celebrities and do cooking segments. Vieira has also won a Daytime Emmy award for her job as host of the game show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." She's expected to join Lauer on "Today" in September. It will be the first anchor change on morning television's top-rated program since 1997.
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Couric announced Wednesday, her 15th anniversary on "Today," that she was leaving next month to join CBS. She'll become anchor and managing editor of the "CBS Evening News" in September. If Couric is to make her dawn-to-dusk move a success, she'll need more people like Amy Lindgren. "I really love her," said Lindgren, a 27-year-old mother of two from Denmark, Maine. "I watch ABC now, but I'd rather watch Katie than the person doing the evening news (at ABC) now. She's outgoing, she's energetic and she seems to relate to the people nicely." Lindgren is among the 29 percent of people responding to an Associated Press-TV Guide poll this week who said they preferred Couric in the evening. Forty-nine percent of the people said they favored Couric in the morning. Despite the public's initial wariness, the poll suggests Couric has a chance to catch on at night, or at least lift the CBS broadcast from third place behind NBC's "Nightly News" and ABC's "World News Tonight."
About half of the respondents said they'd be willing to give Couric a try in the evening. One is Dian Miller of Shepherdsville, Ky., who is a loyal CBS viewer. "I like hearing Bob Schieffer," she said. "I liked Dan Rather, but I think a change is in order. I think it will be a lot better for other women coming up." During a time of transition in television news, Couric at least has a chance of making an impression. Brian Williams, who with only a year in the job at NBC's "Nightly News" is the longest-tenured evening news anchor, was judged most popular in a list of nine TV news personalities that also included Schieffer and Elizabeth Vargas of "World News Tonight." That's the good news for Williams. The bad news is he was named by only 6 percent of the respondents. More than two-thirds didn't list a favorite. Paul Wendel, a 30-year-old accountant from Newtown, Pa., said he associates the evening news with a somber, older person. "It doesn't mean she couldn't do a good job," he said, "but it isn't a person I would associate with the evening news." Only veteran broadcaster Diane Sawyer of ABC's "Good Morning America" received higher marks than Couric, with more than seven in 10 viewing her favorably. Unfortunately for Couric, she also had 12 percent of the people who flat-out didn't like her, higher than for any of the news personalities tested. "I don't like her phony perkiness," said Desiree Dillon, a writer from Benicia, Calif. "I find her to be rather patronizing. Some of her guests she just talks down to, and she wears her opinions on her sleeve." The AP-TV Guide poll of 615 adults was conducted by Ipsos on Monday and Tuesday. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. Six in 10 women said they would watch Couric in the evenings, compared with 38 percent of men. "She kind of bugs me," said Ethelene Fortner of Tulsa, Okla. "I watched Bob Schieffer. He wasn't cocky and a know-it-all like most of them are." Couric turned down an offer of about $20 million a year to stay at NBC in order to take CBS' five-year deal at near her current salary of about $15 million, according to people close to negotiations who spoke on condition of anonymity because networks do not speak publicly about salaries. She's also agreed to do "60 Minutes" stories and prime-time specials for CBS.
© 2006 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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