Couric Cleans Up, Moves On

Tomorrow's finally come for Katie Couric. And from the looks of things, it's gonna be a good day.

The now-former perky Today hostess said goodbye to her co-anchors, her network and, yes, her call time Wednesday morning with 8.4 million viewers tuning in for the teary send-off.

The career-and hairstyle-spanning retrospective marked the fourth most-watched episode of the morning news show ever, bested only by the 2000 and 2004 post-election shows and the 1989 San Francisco earthquake.

Which not only means that Meredith Vieira's got some big shoes to fill, but that Couric just might be able to pied piper enough morning viewers to lift the CBS Evening News out of its third place ratings slump when she takes over in September.

Which is something the 49-year-old newswoman, and CBS, are banking on.

Just a day after her emotional televised farewell, Couric addressed an annual convention of her new network affiliates, and not so humbly declared a new age of broadcast news, one that leaves the current, male-dominated evening landscape as the "pretentious era" of the past.

"The audience is more sophisticated than we give them credit for?they don't want a mechanical Ted Baxter," Couric said, per the Hollywood Reporter, before launching into her personal sales pitch. "I'm a serious, caring, compassionate person. I hope that comes out...People want a multidimensional [news anchor] and not someone they can put in a box."

Couric said she would bring her "humanistic, more accessible" approach to news to her desk job, and thinks the public will be quick to get on board.

"We need to be more level with viewers and explain the issues in a plain-spoken way," she said, though she was quick to add that plain-spoken was not simply a euphemism for soft-hitting.

Couric said that she believed many viewers distrusted the media due to its seemingly being "held captive by spin," acting as a slave to "two separate spins," and two separate sides rather than searching for the real, albeit sometimes hard to package, facts.

She went on to say, per the Hollywood Reporter, that she felt the news was programmed more for Washington insiders than the average at-home viewer, which is something she aspires to change.

Which may be, at least at first, an uphill battle.

The evening-bound anchor, who was speaking as part of a Q&A with Lesley Stahl, a correspondent for 60 Minutes, to which, coincidentally, Couric will also contribute per her new contract, said that she "resents" the general consensus that her transition would be a tough one, given the "lightness" of morning news and the "sober" tone of the nightly version.

"Anyone who watched Today knows that I've done more hard-hitting interviews than any evening news anchor," she said.

Or at least anyone who watched the Today farewell, which took great pains to show Couric in her hard lining glory, tackling countless presidents and heads of state with pointed questions that she refused to let the interviewee weasel out of.

Couric also touched on her Today show gig during the chatfest, saying it was a tough decision to leave a $20 million per year paycheck?and her spot in America's self-proclaimed First Family?but it was the right one to make, and not just for the sake of the history books, though much has been made of the fact that Couric will be the first solo female evening news anchor.

"I knew in my heart I was ready for a change and a new challenge," she said, per the trade mag. "As much as I love doing Today, there's only so much I could do?only so many interviews about hormone-replacement therapy and so many fashion shows."

While she may be eager to move on, Couric doesn't officially slide into her new timeslot digs until September and she for one already knows how she'll spend her summer vacation.

According to the Wall Street Journal, CBS' new leading lady recently shelled out $6.3 million for a tony East Hampton summer abode complete with seven bedrooms, six bathrooms and a five-block commute to the beach.

Which means that, come this fall, the new face of news just might be a tan one.