Katie Couric Moves To CBS

'Today' Co-host Leaves NBC To Anchor CBS Evening News

(CBS) 
Schieffer himself had previously made no secret of his desire to see Couric at CBS News.

"She's a great interviewer, people know who she is, and she has enormous credibility. People believe her. They take her seriously," Schieffer recently told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "She's also a very nice person to have around this place. She would make us a better news department."

"This is one old CBS hand who can't wait till she starts. Couric for my money is the best live television interviewer period," said Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith. "As for a woman as the solo network anchor? What took them so long."

So far this season, CBS Evening News has averaged 7.7 million viewers, 200,000 more than at this point last year, according to Nielsen Media Research. Meanwhile, "NBC Nightly News" is down by 700,000 viewers, and ABC's "World News Tonight" has lost 900,000.

Couric joined "Today" in June 1990 as its first national correspondent. She was also a contributing anchor for "Dateline NBC." She was the longest-serving anchor in the 54-year history of "Today." Couric began her broadcasting career at NBC News in July 1989 as deputy Pentagon correspondent.

From 1987 to 1989, she was a general-assignment reporter at WRC-TV in Washington, D.C., where she won an Emmy and an Associated Press Award for her work. From 1984 to 1986, she was a general-assignment reporter at NBC’s WTVJ in Miami. She began her career as a desk assistant for the ABC News bureau in her native Washington, D.C., in 1979. In 1980, she joined CNN as an assignment editor. She moved to Atlanta as an associate producer and later became the producer of a two-hour news and information program. She eventually became a political correspondent.

In May 2001, Couric was honored with a prestigious George Foster Peabody award for her series "Confronting Colon Cancer," which aired on "Today" in March 2000. Her husband, Jay Monahan, died of colon cancer in 1998 at the age of 42.

She has also won six Emmys, a National Headliner Award, the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi award, an Associated Press Award, a Matrix Award, two Gracie Allen Awards, the Julius B. Richmond Award by the Harvard School of Public Health, and UNICEF’s Danny Kaye Humanitarian Award. Her reporting on colon cancer also contributed to NBC News’ 2001 Edward R. Murrow award for Overall Excellence for the news department.

In March 2000, along with Lilly Tartikoff and the Entertainment Industry Foundation, she launched the National Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance (NCCRA) in an effort to end the threat of colon cancer through education to encourage preventive testing and new medical research.

She has also hosted fundraisers to benefit cancer research, recently raising close to $10 million for the NCCRA and the Jay Monahan Center for Gastrointestinal Health at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

Couric graduated with honors from the University of Virginia. She lives in New York with her daughters, Elinor Tully Monahan and Caroline Couric Monahan.