NBC Signs Couric, Making Her Top-Paid in TV News
By BILL CARTER
NBC and Katie Couric, the anchor of its morning "Today" show, agreed today to what is believed to be the largest financial deal ever signed in television news, reaching well beyond $60 million for the next four and a half years.
Executives familiar with the negotiations said yesterday that Ms. Couric will receive compensation between $15 million and $16 million a year, in a deal structured to include both salary and stock in NBC's parent company, General Electric. The new figure represents an increase of well more than 100 percent from the estimated $7 million a year she had been making.
The deal includes some prime-time specials as well as her "Today" duties, but does not include the creation of a separate production company, a notion that was discussed in the negotiations, a senior NBC executive said.
Ms. Couric, who declined to comment on the financial terms of the deal, said, "I'm extremely gratified; NBC has been extremely generous."
NBC had been under increasing pressure to secure Ms. Couric to a long-term deal to insure the stability of "Today," which is by far the biggest profit-producing program on the network. The program takes in about $250 million a year itself, and with the money it provides to local stations NBC owns, it is responsible for generating about $300 million a year for the company.
"Today" has also been the dominant network morning show for the past six years, but its margin over the second-place "Good Morning, America" on ABC has shrunk in recent months, causing concern among the network's top executives.
Ms. Couric said she is confident the show will maintain its leadership in the morning. "We'll be fine," she said. "I think after the `Today' show is number one for six years it gets to be a boring story. So people start writing about slippage."
In the most recent week measured, "Today," whose margin over "Good Morning, America" had slipped to about 600,000 viewers earlier this month, climbed back to more than 1.6 million viewers.
Ms. Couric is considered a vital part of the program's appeal, and keeping her was so important to NBC that the negotiations included not only the NBC chairman, Bob Wright, and president Andrew Lack, but also Jeffrey Immelt, the new chairman of NBC's parent company, General Electric. One senior executive said that Mr. Wright and Mr. Immelt were in consultations with Ed Scanlon, NBC's chief negotiator, throughout the talks.
Only a month ago, NBC faced the prospect that Ms. Couric might sign only a short-term contract of one year to 18 months, according to executives familiar with the negotiations. NBC pushed for a long-term deal and its executives expressed gratification that they were able to commit her through May 2006.
The deal elevates Ms. Couric not only to a position as the highest-paid individual in television news, but also to a spot among the highest-paid on-the-air figures in any form of network television. At the moment only such comedy stars as Kelsey Grammer and David Hyde Pierce on "Frasier," Ray Romano on "Everybody Loves Raymond," Drew Carey of "The Drew Carey Show" and the stars of NBC's "Friends" would match or exceed Ms. Couric's annual salary.
Ms. Couric's future had been the subject of widespread speculation in the television business over the past year. She was rumored to have held discussions with a number of television syndicators who could have offered her a talk show like Oprah Winfrey's. Successful syndicated shows often bring in far more money even that Ms. Couric's new salary.
Ms. Couric said: "Some of the offers did intrigue me. I felt I owed it to myself to see what else was out there, and there were some exciting-sounding things."
But in the end, she said: "The prospect of leaving NBC made me a little sick to my stomach. There was a knot in there at the thought. Leaving NBC would be like a divorce." She added, referring to her co-anchor Matt Lauer, "Now I don't need to leave Matt."
One crucial factor in her decision to stay at "Today," she said, was the impact of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, which Ms. Couric reported live as they happened on the "Today" show.
"If you ask would I miss being on the cutting edge of breaking news, the answer is a resounding yes," Ms. Couric said.