ABC Bars the Door to 'Katie'; No 3rd Season for Gabfest

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High costs and disappointing ratings combined to sink Katie, Katie Couric's syndicated daytime yakathon, which will not return for a third season, the show's distributor, Disney-ABC Domestic TV, announced this week.

As reported in Ad Age, Capitalnewyork.com and elsewhere, Katie will cease production in June 2014, and air reruns through next September. The show's debut in September 2012, drew record ratings, and the gabfest ratings remained in the top 10 among daytime syndicated programs, but was expensive to produce and had seen its audience wane.

Couric, who reportedly pulled down a cool $20 million to join ABC (see "TUOL" post 6/6/11), recently announced plans to join Yahoo! as the Web site's global news anchor (see "TUOL" post 11/25/13).

Couric Perkily Poised to Jump to Yahoo!

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Fresh from luring David Pogue from the New York Times (see "TUOL" post 10/22/13), Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer's latest coup is expected to be formally announced today--Katie Couric will join the Internet Service Provider as its global news anchor, according to the Allthingsd.com Web site.

Couric is presently wrapping up the second season of her ABC-syndicated talk show, Katie, which she signed onto for a three-year haul in 2012 reportedly for a cool $20 million (see "TUOL" post 6/6/11). Previously, she anchored the CBS Evening News for five years and co-hosted NBC's Today. "Katie" is sagging in the ratings but is still among the highest for syndicated programs.

She is expected to conduct online interviews of prominent politicians, celebrities and business leaders forYahoo! The ISP already is the online news partner of ABC News. "Katie's Take," already is featured on Yahoo! and features re-jiggered content from her talk show.

ABC, which is owned by the Walt Disney Co., reportedly holds rights to Couric's digital outpouring for the life of the three-year contract, which is probably among the many "t's & i's" being crossed and dotted in preparation for today's formal announcement.

Tech Writer Leaves Gray Lady for a Yahoo!

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After 13 years of writing about gadgets and advancements in technology in his wildly popular State of the Art column and Pogue's Posts blog, David Pogue is leaving The New York Times to join Yahoo!, according to articles by the Associated Press and Forbes.com.

Pogue will maintain both of those features at Yahoo!, and also will continue to contribute to Nova on PBS, the CBS Morning News and Scientific American magazine. The promise of editorial freedom and the prospect of reaching 800 million readers a month attracted Pogue to Yahoo! AP viewed the move as reflective of Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer's master plan to bring higher quality content to the Internet company's Web site.

Bad news for the Gray Lady, which also lost popular statistics wizard and election prognosticator extraordinaire Nate Silver to ESPN last July. Pogue and the Times clashed over the latter's conflict of interest prohibitions and Pogue's lucrative speaking engagements (see "TUOL" post 7/7/11).

According to the Associated Press, Pogue has 1.5 million followers on Twitter, which is only 1,499, 691 more than "TUOL."

Supreme Court Takes a Pass on Wisconsin Woman's Privacy Suit Against Google

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The United States Supreme Court last week denied certiorari in Stayart v. Google, Inc. (Docket No. 12-1417), upholding the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit's dismissal of a Wisconsin woman's invasion of privacy suit against search engine colossus Google, Inc.

Beverly Stayart filed suit against Google, alleging misappropriation (Wis. Stat. 995.50(2)(b)) and invasion of her right to publicity, based on an alleged search engine query that linked her name to Levitra, a PDE5 inhibitor drug used to treat erectile dysfunction. In refusing to hear her appeal, the High Court sided with the Seventh Circuit finding that Google could defend against the bev stayart levitra search result allegation by asserting the public interest and incidental use defenses.

The appellate court  decision noted that Stayart had sued Yahoo! in January 2010, regarding the same search phrase, one month before that result allegedly began appearing in Google searches, as illustrated by the purported April 2010, Google search results appended to her Complaint as exhibits. Essentially, both the trial and appeals courts said Stayart's own actions generated "public interest" because court documents are a matter of public interest and search engines that lead those submitting queries to those documents should be protected by the public interest defense.

Google's successful defense to the misappropriation claim is grounded in Wisconsin's law that requires "a substantial rather than an incidental connection between the use [of a person's name for commercial purposes] and the defendant's commercial purposes." The court said Stayart failed to prove Google's purported efforts to derive revenues through linking her name and levitra was substantial.