Katie Couric Is Said to Be Close to Taking a Job at Yahoo

The news, first reported on the website of The Hollywood Reporter, would mean Ms. Couric, one of the most prominent broadcast journalists of the last two decades, would leave television news for the video possibilities of the Internet.

Ms. Couric joined ABC News two years ago as part of a two-pronged deal that also committed ABC’s syndicated programming unit to produce a daytime talk show in which she would star. The future of that show is uncertain: It has commitments from local stations to carry it through the end of this television season.

But the executive with knowledge of the talks, who insisted on anonymity because the deal is not complete, said the Yahoo position was separate from the “Katie” syndicated show.

That is, the ABC syndicated show could possibly continue beyond this season, even after Ms. Couric ends her relationship with ABC News. A decision about renewing “Katie” will most likely come before the end of the year. It will depend on how the show’s ratings stack up against its cost, which, by all accounts, was high.

The “Katie” program was among the highest-rated of the new syndicated talk shows over the last two years, but like most recent rating results, the numbers were considerably lower than syndicated shows scored in the past.

Ms. Couric did make some news with interviews on her show, like one this week with the estranged wife of George Zimmerman, the shooter in the “stand your ground” case in Florida, who was arrested on a domestic violence charge this week.

But ABC News made extremely limited use of Ms. Couric over the two years of her deal with the network. She has not appeared on ABC in months, even as ABC News continues to pay a portion of her salary.