It looks like America’s Got Talent judge Piers Morgan is still the leading contender to take over for Larry King this fall, but the Post reports that’s only because CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric had said no to the job. The former Today host is a key element to an ongoing negotiation between CNN and CBS over a potential content-sharing deal, in which CNN might pick up some of the cost of her exorbitant $15-million-a-year salary. It had been rumored that she might take over King’s desk as part of the talent merger, but Couric didn’t want to be put in a position where she was burdened with the pressure of saving a slumping franchise (as she was when she first transitioned to CBS). Still, according to the Post, she may be given her own production company to create specials for CNN, thereby relieving CBS of some of the financial burden of keeping her onboard. Though the possibility of taking her off of the 6:30 news broadcast was discussed, that option seems off the table for now — largely because, according to a source, CBS has “no plan B.” For Couric, a “famous reader of her own reviews,” seeing that sentence in the Post had to particularly sting.
