Katie Couric's Just Like You, Sort Of - New York Times

The battle for Oprah Winfrey’s mantle began for real on Monday, when Katie Couric became one of several talk show hosts vying to fill the void left when “The Oprah Winfrey Show” ended last year, and darkness fell on daytime.

Ms. Couric began her syndicated show with a taped dream sequence skit â€" she is in her pajamas in bed, fitfully dreaming about her past career, until in the next bed, her former “Today” show co-host Matt Lauer (she calls him her “TV husband”) pops up to assure her that she does indeed have a new show.

That’s not the only reason the first episode of “Katie” looked a lot like a one-woman “Today” show. As was her wont there Ms. Couric mixed friendly chat with probing personal questions. Jessica Simpson, now a Weight Watchers spokeswoman, was the first guest. Ms. Couric couldn’t resist mock-gagging as she described her guest’s love of “slutty brownies” (brownies with chocolate chip cookie dough and Oreo cookie bits). But she repeatedly asked Ms. Simpson about the pressure to lose weight and how she felt about tabloid coverage of her struggle.

Ms. Couric’s show isn’t the first out of the gate this season. Both Ricki Lake, a daytime veteran, and Jeff Probst, the host of “Survivor,” unveiled eponymous talk shows on Monday. “Steve Harvey” began last week. But Ms. Couric is the biggest star and is facing the highest expectations. Celebrity guests come and go, but success rests almost entirely on the likability of the host.

More than most television stars Ms. Couric has a two-toned career and an agile spirit. She shifts easily from dogged, hard-news interviewer to fun-loving queen of girl talk and back again. She managed to be both of those as a longtime co-host of “Today” on NBC. But most recently viewers saw a more serious, more earnest side of Ms. Couric when she became the first female solo anchor of an evening news program at CBS. She had some coups, notably her 2008 interview with Sarah Palin, but her star power didn’t lift CBS’s ratings.

For months Ms. Couric has been tugging her fans and Twitter followers in a lighter direction, posting perky, girlish tweets promoting “Katie” â€" as well as her many appearances on other shows to promote her debut, including “The Chew,” on Monday. “There might be video of a dance off with @TheChew’s @CarlaHall. Wanna see it??” (She is also fond of exclamation points, as in “My out of control sunflower!!”)

Ms. Couric mugged and made jokes about middle-aged dating, but also talked to Sheryl Crow about cancer and brain tumors, and even asked her about the doping scandal tainting the career of Ms. Crow’s ex-boyfriend Lance Armstrong. (Ms. Crow praised his foundation.)

“Katie” will showcase Ms. Couric’s skills as an interviewer. The premiere included teasers of her pressing Heidi Klum about her divorce battle with Seal, an interview that will run in full on Wednesday’s show.

But on Monday, Ms. Couric tried to prove to her audience that she is one of them. She showed a family photo that included her husband, who died of cancer in 1998. Her two daughters and her mother were in the audience; at the end she brought up her three friends from junior high school in Arlington, Va.

There aren’t too many ways to host a popular daytime talk show; it’s a balance of celebrity guests, pathos and punch lines. Ms. Winfrey set the template, and Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil, Anderson Cooper and others have all tried to mix frivolous fun with sob stories and self-help. Ellen DeGeneres has set her own course and became the alpha host by focusing on gentle humor and feel-good comedy.

Newcomers have to find an underserved niche. Mr. Harvey, an actor and entertainer who prides himself on down-to-earth advice, held a social media version of “The Dating Game” on his premiere on Sept. 3. He focused on inspiring stories, from a plucky young woman with incurable cancer to a couple in Idaho, both in their 90s, who fell in love in an assisted-living home. Ms. Lake, who has struggled with her weight much of her life, made a strength of her weakness by devoting her first episode to body image problems, with Emme, the plus-size supermodel, as her first guest.

It’s hard to gauge the likely success of a show based on the first day, but viewers can detect what the network could be worried about. Ms. Couric, more than most news anchors, is a highly paid celebrity who, like many of her guests, finds her personal life filling tabloids and magazine articles. Here she has to be Miss Relatability.

One promotional spot for the show looks like the kind of campaign video that tries to frame Mitt Romney as an average Joe. Over faded family photos Ms. Couric explains that she grew up in a “Leave It to Beaver” family in a modest house without “fancy vacations.” She credits her parents for her success. “My mom gave me my spirit,” she says, “but my dad gave me my soul.”

ABC gave her a syndicated show and a chance to show she is still America’s sweetheart.