Former half-term Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin co-hosted the Today Show today (as part of the NBC's program to counter Katie Couric's stint on Good Morning, America). The show spoofed her love of printed media and also showed her "taking over" Matt Lauer's dressing room. How come Bob Dole never got a gig like this? more ›

When Good Morning America announced that Katie Couric would "sub" in for GMA anchor Robin Roberts this week, the Today Show went into overdrive to respond. The reigning morning show teased that there would be a Today Show legend today (it turned out to be... Meredith Vieira) AND that Sarah Palin would co-host tomorrow. more ›

No, seriously. That's what Lady Gaga's just-announced ABC Thanksgiving special is being called. Because apparently taking over Times Square for New Year's Eve is not enough. more ›

Katie Couric ended her five-year tenure as the anchor for the CBS Evening News, offering an interview with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and ending the program with a five minute highlight reel (video below. She said it was "an incredible privilege to sit in this chair... To all of you, thank you for coming along with me on this incredible journey." more ›

With Katie Couric leaving the CBS Evening News after five years the question now is where she will land. And it looks increasingly like she may end up at ABC, a prospect that may mean the end of General Hospital—the network's last remaining soap opera. more ›

Yep, the rumors were all true: Katie Couric is leaving the CBS Evening News after five years as anchor. And though she has yet to announce where she'll land, rumors that she's heading to ABC reportedly have Barbara Walters in a tizzy. more ›

CBS's $15-million-a-year contract with Katie Couric—arguably the Rodney Dangerfield of the current crop of news anchors—expires June 4. So naturally the speculation that she'll be giving up her post is making a comeback (we feel like we've been kicking the tires of this story for ages now). The AP is reporting today that, according to a network executive, Couric will be leaving the anchor desk when her contract is up. more ›

Sitcoms are the spoonful of sugar to the American medicine of acceptance. How many midwestern ladies all of a sudden became cool with gay men after Queer Eye For the Straight Guy hit the screen? Or more willing to accept a minority holiday like Festivus after watching Seinfeld? Katie Couric thinks that TV could work the same magic for Americans' views of Muslims. Couldn't they just film a reality show of our Muslim president? more ›

Yesterday, numerous bold-faced names were at Lincoln Center for a memorial in honor of late CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite. President Obama was on hand to pay tribute, "I did not know Mr. Cronkite personally. But I have benefited as a citizen from his dogged pursuit to find truth, his passionate defense of the truth of reporting. Walter wasn't afraid to rattle the high and the mighty...Too often, we fill that void [today] with instant commentary and celebrity gossip and the softer stories that Walter disdained, rather than the hard news and investigative journalism he championed." Other speakers included CBS News anchor Katie Couric, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, former President Clinton and singer Jimmy Buffett, who performed "Son of a Son of a Sailor." more ›

Not us—see it below in all its NSFW, uh, glory. The "it" we're talking about here, be warned, is artist Jonathan Horowitz's 2008 piece "CBS Evening News/www.Britneycrotch.org," which frames two big digital prints on top of each other: The top image is Katie Couric at her news desk, and the bottom is Britney Spears’s infamous crotch shot, photoshopped to match Couric's upper half. It's the artistic antithesis of a Reeses Peanut Butter Cup, and you can see it at P.S. 1 in Queens with your own eyes (though the museum politely asks that visitors not flush their gouged-out their eyes down the toilet). more ›

A new interview with Sarah Palin just released has us wishing that we were whisked back to the fall where we knew we could count on Tina Fey and SNL to send it up the following Saturday. The interview features Palin given the opportunity to watch the clip of Tina playing her in the VP debate and firing off what some said was the best line of the election year: "Marriage is a sacred institution between two unwilling teenagers." It turns out that Palin had not seen the clip before the interview a few days ago—despite the clip being rerun ad nauseam on cable news and quoted in newspapers everywhere. Her response: "The Mama Grizzly rises up in me hearing things like that." more ›

Matt Lauer proved himself once again to have one of the best senses of humor of any TV journalist during his friar's club roast yesterday to benefit arts education and a new journalism scholarship in memory of Tim Russert. But all of the headlines today were swept up by the visit Lauer got from the man on the other end of one of his tensest on-air moments, Tom Cruise. more ›

On tonight's CBS Evening News, Katie Couric posed questions about Roe v. Wade to both vice presidential candidates, as well as a follow-up about any Supreme Court decisions they disagreed with. Joe Biden why he thought Roe v. Wade was a good decision, Sarah Palin why it was a bad one. more ›

The AP notes how CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric has been hitting a new high note in her career with her series of interviews with vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin and is finally getting respect. (It's better than rumors that she's moving on). Couric, though, says, “I’ve never really lost confidence in my abilities, which I guess is pretty miraculous. I didn’t really have a lot of platforms to do what I excel at, which is talk to people and do interviews.” more ›

Katie Couric had another exclusive interview tonight--one with both John McCain and his running Sarah Palin. And in the video above, Couric asks Palin about her remarks--made while getting a cheesesteak in Philadelphia, to a Temple University graduate student--saying the U.S. should cross the Afghanistan border to Pakistan ("If that's what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should").

Couric: Is that something you shouldn't say out loud, Sen. McCain? more ›

Last night Tina Fey reprised her role as Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live, and with Amy Poehler as Katie Couric, they recreated the interview that aired on CBS last week. more ›

The spectacle of Sarah in the City continues! Alaska governor Sarah Palin spent her second full day in New York meeting more foreign leaders: Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashivli, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, who said she was "gorgeous" and that he knew "why the whole of America is crazy about you." more ›

After speculation that she would leave CBS News well before her contract expires in 2011, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric said she would be staying put. During the summer television press tour, she told reporters, "I have no plans to leave anytime soon. I'm very committed to the people here and the product." The product in question has lagged in ratings, placing third after NBC's and ABC's evening news broadcasts. Next week, all network anchors--Brian Williams, Charles Gibson and Couric--are joining Obama on his trip to the Middle East. When asked if the media was biased towards Obama, Couric said, "I don't think we're 'in the tank' at all. We talk to Sen. [John] McCain extensively. We go to events he allows us to cover." more ›

As rumors about Katie Couric leaving the CBS Evening News early next year continue to simmer, the Daily News offers one suggestion from a network (CBS? CNN?) "insider": "Take Katie off the 'Evening News,' let her to do Larry King, and then let [Anderson] Cooper anchor" the CBS Evening News. more ›

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal suggested CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric may leave the network "well before her contract expires in 2011" and as soon as early next year. more ›

A look at some of this week's noteworthy television: more ›

Rudy Giuliani told the American public, via a sit-down with Katie Couric, that the story pointing out expenses for trips to the Hamptons - to see then-mistress Judi Nathan - were billed across a number of obscure city agencies was a "typical political hit job" and a "debate day dirty trick." He even called it a "false story," but Politco, the website that broke the story, pointed out neither Giuilani or his aides "have questioned... more ›

Waiting for the 1, by jschumacher on Flickr more ›

Bye Bye Bolaris? more ›

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a DOA/Fall Victim at 1 Hogan Place in Manhattan (that's the Manhattan DA's office), a double stabbing on East 171st St. in the Bronx, and an overturned ambulance at Broadway and Delafield Ave. on Staten Island.
• Opening day sales for tickets to The Metropolitan Opera set a record this Sunday after increasing 25% year over year, to $2.08 million. Online sales to performances were 50% higher than 2006's opening.
• New York apple growers are concerned despite what is shaping up to be an excellent harvest this year. Recent moves to crack down on illegal immigration means that orchard owners may not be able to fill the demand for seasonal agricultural workers to pick all of the apples.
• Cops arrested the surgical scrubs-wearing bank robber who darted into a hospital where he blended with facility personnel to evade capture. 50-year-old Robert Britt actually works at the VA hospital near the bank he robbed and already served seven years in prison during the 1980s for another bank robbery.
• An unauthorized biography of Katie Couric paints an unflattering portrait of the CBS News anchor, including allegations that the only reason she didn't file for divorce from her cancer-stricken husband was a fear of bad publicity.
• Bobby's Happy House, a Harlem music store opened in 1946, is being asked to leave its present location by new building owners, and 90-year-old owner Bobby Robinson is unsure if he will be able to find a new space to open.
• Curbed looks at the mysterious "Pine Tree Building" on 2nd Place between Hoyt and Boyd Sts. in Carroll Gardens.
• A class action suit has been filed on behalf of the approximately 100 men and women who hand out copies of AMNewYork newspapers in front of subway stations. The suit against the Tribune Co. alleges that the $20 a day workers are paid to distribute the papers is below New York's minimum wage when one takes into account how long employees work.

There must be something about the morning shift at WABC. After just four days on the job as the permanent replacement for Steve Bartelstein, Ken Rosato, overslept and was late for the 5 a.m. edition of Eyewitness News. We think it is pretty safe to assume that he just overslept, since he probably hasn’t adjusted his body clock fully to the new hours, and that he wasn’t spending the night out clubbing like his predecessor. We wonder if he brought bagels to smooth things over. more ›

New York magazine has a big cover feature on Katie Couric, aka America's Sweetheart...at least, she used to be. The feature by Joe Hagan is at times a Couric confessional, complaint-fest, and call to arms (literally - she apparently "slapped" a news editor on the arm for using the word "sputum") that looks at the much ballyhooed move from the Today show to the storied news ground of CBS where her evening news program is in third place. more ›