Will Katie Couric Land on the Web?

Katie Couric is expected to soon leave her $15 million per year position at CBS, where she became the first solo female anchor to host a network evening news program almost six years ago.

The Sarah Palin interviewer extraordinaire will end her stint behind the news desk to pursue plans to host a syndicated talk show, which will compete against similar programming from Anderson Cooper, Rosie O’Donnell and Martin Bashir in an attempt to fill the daytime talk show power vacuum Oprah will leave in her wake.

But Katie Couric’s talk show won’t be ready for air until Fall 2012. What’s a television journalist to do in the mean time? How about start a production company and online news show with a major internet destination? From Lacey Rose, Lindsay Powers at The Hollywood Reporter

Looking to further diversify, Couric is also believed to be eyeing both a production company and a content deal with one of the major Web portals. According to one source, both AOL and Yahoo have expressed interest in partnering with Couric, a move that speaks to the growing need for these sites to differentiate themselves with original, premium content in an increasingly fractured environment where outlets like Facebook and Twitter compete for users’ time.

If Couric developed online programming with AOL or Yahoo, it’d be a great move for two reasons. One, she’d find herself on familiar ground. The web isn’t unexplored territory for the 54-year-old, who began @KatieCouric – a weekly, one-hour online interview program on CBSNews.com – in 2009. Since then, she’s interviewed everyone from Justin Bieber to Glenn Beck.

And two, a show on a highly trafficked online portal would be a great marketing tactic for Couric and whatever television property she’s developing, ensuring a larger audience whenever she makes her TV talk show debut. It worked for Conan, right?