Katie Couric: Network's Perkiest Captain of Industry

by Tyler Carey, Illustrated by Jacob Chabot

I don't blame Katie one bit for letting every interested network exec bend her ear over the possibility of jumping ship to the competition or any number of potential new projects. When your own bosses are negotiating a contract in the dozens of millions of dollars, why not consider seeing if somebody else might be interested in providing you hundreds of millions of dollars, right?

In the end, Katie decided to stay at NBC, where the execs reportedly rustled up a SIXTY-FIVE MILLION DOLLAR CONTRACT! That's SIX, FIVE and then six ZEROS! Stick a couple of commas in there, too. If you ever told an Afghan warlord that we have a lady in America who gets paid $65 Million Dollars to interview Britney Spears, cook with Emeril, try to look serious when she's reporting the news, and get a makeover on the air about every other goddamn week, he'd say, "Just how many sheep can you buy with Sixty Five Million Dollars?" If our generals told him, we'd...well, we'd lose the war.

Goddamn! Sixty-Five Million Dollars! How can they pay her that when there are still baseball players making less than that?!? And what has she contributed to society (besides advertising revenue) that makes her worth SIXTY-FIVE MILLION GODDAMNED DOLLARS?

If you were to conduct a poll of housewives who watch the show (and no, we didn't - so if the following assumptions are statistically inaccurate, we don't want to hear about it), you'd probably hear the following reasons why they think she's just ducky:

First off, she's got such a chipper fucking personality. I mean, don't you want to just listen to her wax on about life in New York and her sentiments on September 11th when you're hung over and trying to get ready for work? I know I do. I mean, when she's not doing the trick for me, I like to put a big spaghetti pot on my head and bang it with a ladle until my nerves have completely given out, and I could give a shit about my hangover anymore.

Secondly, she got a colonoscopy on the air. For this, many Americans think she's a hero, as she brought this uncomfortable-yet-necessary medical procedure to light for so many. Oh, you don't know what a colonoscopy is? I don't even like to talk about it. Oh, okay. First, a gastroenterologist makes you take your pants off, and then he gives you a valium. Then he lubes you up and sticks a big tube up your ass. Sounds like a typical Friday night so far, right? No, it's not! At the end of the tube is a camera. He takes a gooood loooong look up there for things called polyps, which can be the start of colon cancer. Now I don't know about you, but I come from New York, and in New York you only see this kind of shit in the back of SoHo art galleries. Jokes aside, it's actually a very common examination that many people over forty years of age get on a regular basis. It's uncomfortable yes, but it can save your life.

My beef with Katie over this is that the media circus surrounding her getting a tube up her ass made it sound like she was frikking Jonas Salk, while in reality she was just getting a checkup that probably millions of Americans get every year. They just have the good taste not to talk about it.

When you come down it, the only person really worth watching on the Today Show is the weatherman. For years, Willard Scott (the original Ronald McDonald) amused many with his vicious visits to senior citizens on their one hundredth birthdays, in which he would talk nostalgically with them about the good old days, and then slip in a couple of snarky one-liners that often went over their senile heads. Al Roker earned the slot, after years of playing second-fiddle, and being the weather guru on NY's Live at Five news broadcast. Unfortunately, it took years for him to come into his own. NBC missed Roker's charm for years, spending a lot of time coercing him into doing human interest segments in which he would try out the latest fad diet, only to remain the portly fella we all know and love. Roker, who exhibits an intelligence and personality lacking in most weathermen and journalists, has rapidly developed into a major asset for the show, and a pop-culture icon. He's even a nation-wide pitchman now, shilling Lipton Brisk tea.

Hindsight's 20/20 (and perhaps 20/20 was interested in Couric, too - I've never heard it mentioned, but she'd be a sight for sore eyes to the poor viewers watching Barbara Walters for the past far-too-many years), and I think NBC should've used some good judgment and finally given Roker his due. $65 Million for Katie? No, NBC should've given the $65 Million Dollars to Al Roker. I think the Today Show should be just him sitting on a big sofa for two hours every morning, eating muffins out of a big paper bag while discussing political science with the members of the Cato Institute. Occasionally, he could look out the window and talk about cumulus clouds. Then, back to the muffins and the Cato Institute.

Now that Katie has bitched about her job on the air on at least one occasion, and the Today Show has started to be eclipsed by the even bigger crap fest that is Good Morning, America, I think NBC realizes that they fucked up. If NBC were sharp, when Katie's contract came up for review and ABC or Vivid Video or whoever was wooing her, they would've told Katie to go fuck herself. She probably would've done it on the air, too, if it had helped raise awareness about fucking yourself. And, unlike the colonoscopy, that's something I'd like to see.