Katie Couric proved her enduring appeal for television viewers with a highly successful debut to her new syndicated talk show “Katie†Monday.
Its an especially competitive new market for syndicated shows, which aspire to fill the void left by Oprah Winfrey. But Ms. Couric's show, which included interviews with Sheryl Crow and Jessica Simpson, scored the best initial rating number for a new talk entry since “Dr. Phil†in 2002.
That number was a 2.8 rating in figures gathered overnight from the country's largest cities. A total audience number will not be available until Sept. 25. But by comparison, Ms. Couric dominated over new shows hosted by Steve Harvey (a 1.5 rating); Jeff Probst (a 1.0 rating); and Ricki Lake (a 0.8 rating.)
Ms. Couric has bolted out of the gate with great ratings before, however. For her first newscast as the anchor of the CBS evening news in 2006, she attracted an enormous audience of 13.6 million viewers. That night, she had a much bigger rating than her syndicated debut just among viewers between the ages of 18 and 49, a 3.9.
But that came after an enormous promotion campaign by CBS. Her ratings dropped sharply after that and she and CBS remained the third-rated newscast for most of her tenure.
But that was another time and another format. Most reviews noted that Ms. Couric seemed back in her element in the syndicated show Monday, covering a range of topics from serious to light.
Bill Carter writes about the television industry. Follow @wjcarter on Twitter.
No comments:
Post a Comment