After cycling through all the major networks, except Fox, Katie Couric announced this week she would become the global anchor at Yahoo News. After the surprise wore off, the primary question was: Is this a bold claim on the future or a desperate gamble based on a discredited business model?
It appears to be a marriage of convenience. For Couric, 56, who famously tried to resurrect the CBS Evening News, Yahoo is a chance to embrace a new medium. Couric told Capital New York that she won't try to reproduce a half-hour news show online, but instead will use the opportunity to experiment: "What I really am excited about in working with the team at Yahoo is that there are no rules right now, we are going to try things, we are going to see how they go, we are going to see what people are interested in, we can do everything from a town hall meeting to in-depth interviews to a breaking news story."
See also: Does AOL Have a Fighting Chance Against YouTube?
For Yahoo, the hire is part of CEO Marissa Mayer's continuing attempts to recast Yahoo. Ben Winkler, chief digital officer and managing director of media-buying firm OMD, said that Mayer is really trying to transform Yahoo into an "experiences company." Mayer is hoping that fans will tune into Couric in the same way they check Yahoo's weather app.
Unfortunately, the track record for such cross-media successes is poor because of a generally older audience for TV news talent, a standard lack of offline promotion for online properties and the fact that social networks have obviated the concept of an online newscast.
Take Meredith Viera. A one-time Today anchor, Viera started a YouTube channel in August called Lives that had just 38,000 subscribers at the time of writing. (About 5.6 million were tuning into Today when Viera left). Another big star, Amy Poehler, also failed to bring her audience to YouTube; her Smart Girls channel has just shy of 100,000. Ashton Kutcher's channel Thrash Lab has around 66,000.
Compare that to the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, which still manages to draw an average of 8.4 million viewers a night, according to Nielsen.
On the other hand, Couric's current talk show, Katie, draws an average of 2.2 million viewers. The average age for those viewers is even more troubling: 61.4.
"Those numbers aren't gangbusters," said Brad Adgate, SVP and director of research for Horizon Media. If the idea is to draw older viewers to online news, then Yahoo is facing an uphill battle. Only 38% of adults between 50 and 64 cite the Internet as their dominant news source, according to the the Pew Research Center. Among those 65 and older, the figure drops to 18%.

Drawing a younger audience will require leveraging Yahoo's homepage, which claims to reach 43 million people a month — but that may not be enough. For TV networks, using TV time for promos is standard, as are multi-million-dollar media buys that include bus wraps and billboards. Even in that case, the success rate of new shows that get renewed the following season is only around 30%. Online properties don't tend to get the same treatment. Yahoo's biggest video hit, Burning Love, was a fluke, Winkler said.
This is the general pattern for online video success. Things catch on virally and organically, not because of tune-in ads. Critics of YouTube's 100 Channels initiative, for instance, claim that they are half-hearted vanity projects and the channels suffer from a lack of promotion. Google claimed it planned to spend $200 million promoting the content; however, much of that was actually "free" media, like YouTube's homepage.
So Winkler said he'll know Yahoo is serious about Couric's show when he sees some ads.
"No matter how big the name is, you have to put some promotion behind it ," Winkler said.
A final obstacle to success is social media. Andrew Tyndall, a media analyst, pointed out that nightly newscasts of old were nothing more than about eight stories that anchors thought were important that day. That function, he says, has been replaced by Twitter. Yahoo's move reminds Tyndall of CBS CEO Les Moonves hiring Couric to do the evening news at CBS.
"The deal is like an old media deal," he said. "The concept of a celeb du jour being the answer to a ratings problem."
Tyndall suggested an alternate theory on how the deal came to light in the first place. Since Yahoo already has a deal with ABC, the latest maneuver may offer a way to park Couric's salary at Yahoo amid a multi-year deal.
Said Tyndall: "They're looking at Yahoo to take her off their hands."
Image: Getty/Mike Coppola