A first in the U.S.: Live television is landing on the Xbox 360. Microsoft Corp. announced plans to bring live TV and YouTube to the video game console at a press conference today kicking off the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the gaming industry’s annual convention. The company says live TV would be offered by domestic and international broadcasters, but no other details were revealed. Partnerships with international broadcasters currently bring live TV to the Xbox 360 in the United Kingdom, Australia and France; but the service unveiled today would be the first such offering available on a gaming console in the United States.
Making the network rounds: Katie Couric has worked morning TV and the evening news, and now she will enter the world of daytime talk in the post–Oprah Winfrey era. ABC announced today a multiyear-deal with Couric to produce the talk show, slated to launch in September 2012. She will work for ABC News in the interim. Couric had talked with all the major players in the syndication market. But by the time she signed off last month after five years as the CBS Evening News anchor, ABC had outlasted the other suitors. ABC’s bet was that with Winfrey ending a talk show that dominated the marketplace, viewers would seek something new. Couric was the biggest available name out there. Former NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker, who ran the control room at NBC’s Today show when Couric was a co-host there, will be executive producer of the new talk show. The show doesn’t have a name yet, and will be based in New York. Eight ABC-owned stations covering nearly one-quarter of the nation’s population, including stations in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, have agreed to air the show in their 2 p.m. Central time slots, ABC says.
