Katie Couric’s daytime talk show renewed for season 2; thank Manti Te’o?

While the recent interview featuring Notre Dame football star and hoax victim Manti Te’o surely helped the cause here, we all knew that this was coming regardless: Katie Couric’s daytime show “Katie” has been officially renewed for a second season.

From a mere ratings standpoint alone, the return of “Katie” for another season was almost a lock from the day the show debuted to huge numbers. This has been the top-rated new talk show of the season, and she continues to fare well in ranking sixth out of the eighteen major syndicated talk shows on the market (which includes “Ellen,” “Dr. Phil,” and other heavyweights). The only real question going into this was if Katie still had the sort of audience and capabilities to cover all sorts of news that she had on “The Today Show,” the answer here turned out to be “yes.”

Couric joins Steve Harvey and Trisha Goddard as some of the new daytime hosts who have already received a renewal. Meanwhile, the jury is still out on a crop of other new hosts to join the circuit this year, including “Survivor’s” Jeff Probst as well as Ricki Lake, who has attempted to bring her classic show back following a stint on “Dancing with the Stars.” The daytime market is an extremely competitive one, and for evidence just look at the fact that Anderson Cooper’s show is set to end in May after two seasons on the air.

Couric’s show recently underwent a change behind the scenes, with Jeff Zucker leaving in order to help oversee the operation over at CNN. (Couric serves as one of the show’s executive producers.)

What do you think about the renewal? If you want to read some more about the Te’o interview, you can do so over here.

Photo: ABC