She’s going to stay tangled up in Yahoo’s web. At least for now.
Yahoo’s announced the loss of around 1,700 jobs and a cataclysmic refocusing of its website. But Katie Couric, the glitzy “Global News Anchor” for the embattled Web portal, still plans to wait and see what happens to the company, a source close to the journalist said.
Couric, reportedly paid $10 million a year, files reports for Yahoo daily. But it’s awfully difficult to find her content on Yahoo.
“It’s become a distribution issue,” a Yahoo executive said. “Katie’s stuff does well for the company, but it’s been a haphazard effort when it comes down to framing it.”
YAHOO SHUTTING DOWN VARIOUS CONTENT VERTICALS
Couric was the first high-wattage news personality to jump into a purely digital space. She joined Yahoo back in 2013 and, despite other woes, her video content has been among the bright spots for the troubled company.
“Our team at Yahoo News has been doing some beautifully produced, high quality pieces,” says Couric.
The digital world “continues to evolve and I like being in the news space, and the tremendous flexibility Yahoo gives me to develop scripted and unscripted projects on other platforms,” Couric told the Daily News. “We have an incredible team of people, who have been working their asses off in this period of uncertainty and I’m so proud of each and every one of them. I also feel that with this experience (at Yahoo) I have a better understanding of how a variety of online platforms work, and I’m still learning all the time.”
Couric’s video content has generated more than 250 million views, as of 2015. Her work has been seen, on average, more than any other videos on Yahoo News.
When it comes to politics alone, she’s actually generated numbers cable channels would kill for. Couric’s interviews with 2016 presidential contenders alone have amassed more 15 million video streams.
The newswoman has also drawn heavy-hitting sponsors like H&R Block and Merrill Lynch — companies that generally would not be expected to go with Yahoo as an advertising platform.
Even so, Yahoo’s poor content distribution plan has buried Couric’s work behind layers of links. That failure goes along with the collapse of many of Yahoo’s other ambitions.
Among the victims last month were the company’s digital magazines: Yahoo Food, Yahoo Health, Yahoo Parenting, Yahoo Makers, Yahoo Travel, Yahoo Autos and Yahoo Real Estate.
The news content team remains mostly intact. And Couric really does have a pretty good deal. It pays well, lets her produce good content and, best of all, offers Couric the right to leave Yahoo at any time without penalty, insiders have said.
So she’s in no rush to leave. But sources say she’s got her ear to the ground now.
The collapse of Yahoo didn’t come out of the blue.
In a February call with Wall Street analysts before the layoffs, Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer hinted that the company was about to be significantly shaken. She even alluded to it being for sale.
Potential suitors include Time Inc., Verizon and NBC parent Comcast, according to sources familiar with the situation.
Any one of those companies could provide Couric with a bigger, more structured platform to go along with what she has now.
But for the three months that ended Dec. 31, the Sunnyvale, Calif., company reported $1.27 billion in revenue, up only 1.6% from the same period a year earlier.
The company also took hits when it paid $17 million for the rights to stream a 2015 NFL game between the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Buffalo Bills. Worse still, Yahoo took a $42-million write-down at its video division when TV shows “Community,” “Sin City Saints” and “Other Space” flopped.
That’s the kind of return that Wall Street hates, potential buyers love — and high profile journalists like Couric can use to score even better deals.
