Katie Couric Invited Sarah Palin To New Talk Show 'Katie': TCA

Ray Richmond contributes to Deadline’s TV coverage.

Katie Couric breezed through ABC’s morning presentation at TCA to hype her forthcoming syndicated daily daytime talk show Katie, disclosing that she already has invited famed former interview subject Sarah Palin to come on but has yet to hear back. Couric also has invited President Obama and Michelle Obama as well as Mitt and Ann Romney to the show, which premieres September 10.

Couric also detailed what she expects the show to be (she disclosed that Sheryl Crow wrote and performs the theme song) and that producer Jeff Zucker — long her boss during her years at the Today show — will be constantly in her ear during production. “I’m really excited to be able to work with Jeff,” Couric said. “We had some great years on the Today show and have very similar sensibilities. We can finish each other’s sentences. And I know he’s got my back. I trust him implicitly. It givers me a great sense of security to have him here, to have someone in your ear whom you really trust.”

She described her new talker as being sometimes single-topic, sometimes two or three, with subjects that she as a fiftysomething woman can relate to. “We’ll be talking about the impact of technology on our relationship with our children, and the best way to care for an aging parent,” Couric said. “We’ll have a regular segment called “Women Who Should Be Famous”, about women who are doing extraordinary things and not getting credit for it.” Katie also will feature the usual parade of stars and newsmakers, she assured.

Couric also said she’s glad to be back in a format that represents something closer to familiar turf after five years at CBS News. “Some of the criticism that I endured there was hard to take,” she admitted, “because so much of it was so shallow and arbitrary. People would criticize me for the way I held my hands during the newscast, or wearing a white coat after Labor Day.” She also called Ann Curry’s recent ouster from the Today show “heartbreaking. I think Ann has done an incredible job. It was hard to watch that morning when she was on the air and close to tears. But I am confident that she’ll land on her feet and do great things.”

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