By Keach Hagey And Douglas MacMillan
On a recent afternoon at Yahoo's offices in New York, a
camera-ready Katie Couric--silk blouse, pencil skirt, high
heels--strode past a gaggle of her rumpled young coworkers hunched
over their computers.
It has been less than a year since Ms. Couric, who once made $15
million a year as the anchor of the CBS Evening News, became the
first major television journalist to jump to the Web. The
58-year-old is still getting used to the Silicon Valley culture of
Yahoo, which is based in Sunnyvale, Calif.
"I call this hoodie row," she said, clutching a
pomegranate-infused water she had retrieved from the office's
station of free snacks for all employees and guests. There were no
such snack stations, and decidedly fewer hoodies, at CBS News.
Ms. Couric's first year at Yahoo was a test of whether
television journalism's big-name personalities and storytelling
techniques, like the newsmaking interview, can survive on the
Web.
Yahoo's bet on Ms. Couric is one of the most high-profile moves
Chief Executive Marissa Mayer has made in her attempt to turn
around the lumbering tech company. Ms. Mayer is aiming to reduce
Yahoo's dependence on home page traffic, which in March was down
31% compared with a year earlier, according to comScore. She also
wants to move away from a reliance on the display advertising
business, which has suffered revenue drops for the last four
quarters. Her goal is to diversify into growing arenas like video
advertising and social media-distributed content.
Ms. Couric will play a major role in that strategy. She will be
one of the stars of Yahoo's big "NewFront" event for advertisers in
New York on Monday, when the company will pitch its latest
offerings.
Ms. Couric's best-performing interview, a sit-down with "7th
Heaven" star Stephen Collins, addressing allegations that he had
sexually abused minors, racked up five million views, according to
Yahoo. That is more than half of a typical evening news audience,
bigger than an average cable news audience, and about twice the
views of the best-performing online video on CNN.com, the No. 2
player in online news after Yahoo.
However, it is less than half of the best-performing videos on
NowThis News, a social media-delivered video news outfit, according
to a NowThis News spokesman. And most of Ms. Couric's other
best-performing videos drew smaller audiences, between 1 million
and 2 million views.
Yahoo believes closing the gap with other digital video outlets
will require distributing more aggressively through social media,
rather than getting views through the home page, which now accounts
for about 65% to 70% of news video traffic, according to a person
familiar with the matter.
"News is all about getting the material to people, instead of
asking people to come to you," Ms. Couric said. "That is why I
think social is playing a bigger and bigger role."
Case in point: Ms. Couric's interview with Instagram comedy star
Josh Ostrovsky, who goes by the names the Fat Jewish or the Fat
Jew, drew about 300,000 views in its first few hours on Yahoo's
home page, but once millions of fans picked it up on social media,
it racked up 2 million views by the end of the week.
Ms. Couric concedes that luring interview subjects to an online
outlet isn't always easy. "At first we were like, 'Please do
something on Yahoo, ' and they were like, 'what?'" she said. But
the past year has changed that, as she has gotten interviews with
John Kerry, Mitt Romney, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Ruth Bader
Ginsburg, among others.
In addition to hiring Ms. Couric at a salary of more than $5
million a year, according to people familiar with the matter, Yahoo
has hired famous journalists like David Pogue from the New York
Times and Michael Isikoff from NBC News.
That hasn't shielded Yahoo TV from barbs. On Saturday, at the
annual White House correspondents' dinner, comedienne Cecily
Strong, who hosted the event, said, "Last year's host, Joel McHale,
proves that speaking at this dinner is an amazing opportunity that
can take you from starring in a show on NBC all the way to starring
on that same show--but on Yahoo."
(She was referring to how Yahoo is producing a new season of Mr.
McHale's sitcom "Community," which along with Ms. Couric's
programming and licensing reruns of shows including "SNL" are part
of a series of big investments Ms. Mayer has made in Web
video.)
Still, Ms. Couric herself was among the luminaries invited to
the correspondents' dinner, seated at a table with fashion model
Karlie Kloss and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, among
others.
Yahoo and Ms. Couric, who reports directly to Ms. Mayer, are
still negotiating the renewal of her contract, which lapsed several
months ago, but both sides are positive about their future
together, according to people familiar with the matter.
All told, Ms. Couric has generated about 118 million views at
Yahoo since coming on full-time in June, growing each quarter. If
each of these were attached to a video ad sold at the market rate
for premium online video of between $15 to $25 per one-thousand
views, according to media buyers, then those views have generated
revenue equal to about half her salary. That doesn't count
additional revenue from major sponsorships and a Snapchat deal.
Kathy Savitt, Yahoo's chief marketing officer, who also oversees
Yahoo's content, disputes such back-of-the-envelope math. "We
believe Katie's tenure at Yahoo has been accretive to our business,
accretive to our users, and accretive to the overall Yahoo brand,"
she said.
Ms. Couric has shown some advertiser-wooing power, having
brought in new advertisers like Merrill Edge financial services,
which sponsored her "Now I Get It" explainer segment, and helps
Yahoo sell ads beyond her own work.
"They are using her as a tent pole, and then packaging other
media around it," said Adam Kasper, chief media officer of ad
agency Havas Media.
For her interview subjects who aren't happy with just appearing
on the Web, Yahoo and ABC have a deal that allows some of Ms.
Couric's interviews to air on ABC News shows.
But Ms. Couric feels the Web is a more interesting place to
play, in part because it doesn't have the same ratings pressures as
traditional TV.
"Every day in television you are measured by your ratings the
day before, " she said. "It results in a kind of cynical content,
not necessarily driven by core values of journalism."
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