I'm late on this, because I've been away, but Caitlin Flanagan's essay in the current issue of The Atlantic is the best entry so far in the large and ever-growing literature of Katie Couric dissections.

Writing as a fan of Today-era Katie, Flanagan nails both the nature of Couric's appeal and the reasons that appeal didn't translate into better ratings for CBS Evening News.

CBS chief Les Moonves, she writes,

hired Katie based on the assumption that she had a huge and adoring fan base that would follow her anywhere. But by definition, the kind of person who has time on her hands in the morning -- who has nothing but time, time that must be filled, endured, killed -- is the kind of person who is in a race against the clock by early evening.