Good news for Katie Couric could turn out to be not-so-good news for fans of General Hospital.
Following much speculation, the Disney/ABC Television Group announced on Monday that the former CBS Evening News anchor, “award-winning journalist, best-selling author and popular TV personality” has inked a multi-year, multi-platform agreement to host and produce her own nationally syndicated talk show and to join the ABC News team.
Couric’s involvement with ABC News will start this summer, while her daytime talker isn’t set to premiere until September 2012 — giving ABC some time to assess its increasingly in-flux daytime lineup.
How grim is the prognosis for GH? As of right now, the ABC-owned stations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Houston, Raleigh/Durham and Fresno — representing nearly a quarter of the nation’s TV households — have cleared Couric’s show to air in the 3 pm time slot aka General Hospital territory for many of us.
Although ABC is set to return the final hour of its daytime network block to affiliates no earlier than September 2012, the company says in its press release that it “continues to support General Hospital” as well as its recently announced plans to launch The Chew (in September) and The Revolution (in January 2012) — the two lifestyle shows that will displace ABC’s other two soaps, All My Children and One Life to Live.
source:tvline.com
