Little did I know CBS was paying a $5 million settlement at the time to a woman who’d accused him of sexual assault.
BY 2005 I WAS at a crossroads. I loved the TODAY show, but after 15 years, I was getting restless. I longed to be respected for my journalistic chops, and although I’d done many serious interviews in the morning, the fun stuff, which I had a blast doing—like flying across the plaza dressed as Peter Pan while flinging phosphorescent confetti, fulfilling my dream of being a backup singer for Darlene Love, hurling myself onto a Velcro wall—was what people remembered.
I felt like the show was getting softer, the hard news interviews getting shorter, the segments getting more sensational. The Laci Peterson story seemed to come on like clockwork at 7:35 every day, featuring her lowlife husband, Scott, a prime suspect in her murder, not because there were new developments but because the story “rated.” One morning, we had to wear goofy Jetsons-like outfits for something called “the TODAY show of the future.” As Tom Werner drolly noted, “I don’t think that’s going to win you any Peabodys.”
Under any circumstances, 15 years is a long time to be waking up every morning before sunrise. And I never forgot the cautionary tale that was Jane Pauley. I wanted to leave on my own terms, not because some TV executive decided I was no longer the flavor of the month. I wanted to jump before I got pushed.
RUMORS STARTED FLYING as early as November 2005, with a New York Magazine piece speculating about the next round of musical chairs at the Big Three: “New CBS News president Sean McManus, also the head of CBS Sports, has settled in quickly to his first-floor office suite and to the most thankless task on his to-do list: getting a star—preferably Katie Couric—to lift CBS News out of the bottom of the ratings race.”
A steady drumbeat kicked in, with media columnists stoking a will she/won’t she guessing game. One night, Ellie, Carrie, and I were passing out food to the homeless from the back of a mobile van. When I handed one guy his soup and an orange, he looked up at me and smiled. “Hey, everyone! That’s Katie Couric!” he told the people in line. Then he turned back and leaned in. “So, are you going to CBS or not?”
NBC made it clear they did not want me to leave. Jeff seemed agitated at the prospect. Sitting across from him in his office, I remember how empowered I felt to be in demand and in charge of my own destiny. Given how instrumental Jeff had been in my success at TODAY, it was liberating to have a big opportunity outside the shop that had created us both.
I told Jeff I was really intrigued by the CBS job. That’s when he started pulling a series of rabbits out of a hat. The first one: “I’d like to offer you a new contract, where you’d make 20 million a year.”
I had to admit, that was one big-ass rabbit. Then the rabbits started multiplying—he offered me summers off, prime-time specials, and the opportunity to fill in for Jay Leno one week a year.
The other Jeff—Immelt, now the CEO of GE—got involved. He invited me to the 22nd floor of 30 Rock, where all the executives breathed rarefied air. He brought me into a conference room, stood at the head of the table, and planted an expensively shod foot on the gleaming surface, putting his crotch squarely in my sight line.
“You’re so important to NBC,” he said. “It’s hard to imagine the place without you.”
I directed my gaze northward and said I had loved my time at the network, but the CBS job was an extraordinary opportunity—“for me and for women.”
Proving that we could do this, and do it well, meant so much to me. While I secretly wondered if I was really up to it （such a woman thing; has any man in the same position ever wondered that?）， I thought maybe I could move the ball forward just a bit for my female compadres.
I KNEW IT WOULD be hard saying goodbye to NBC, my identity and my people for 20 years. I’d miss everything about that place: the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree （that tourist magnet we all secretly bitched about）， the apple-cheeked ice-skaters, the red velvet stanchions at the deco elevators, the guards behind their podiums always greeting me exuberantly.
And the things I got to do, the mind-bending encounters. When Vladimir Putin came to town, NBC hosted a dinner at 21. I was seated to his left and took the opportunity to ask why he hadn’t cut short his seaside vacation when a Russian submarine sank, killing all 118 sailors aboard. Through a translator, Putin said it wouldn’t have made any difference. To which I said, “Perception is everything. At least you would have been seen as a compassionate leader.” Putin just stared at me with those beady little eyes.