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Couric’s talk show to end after this season

NEW YORK — Katie Couric is calling it quits on her weekday talk show as she heads to Yahoo.

Couric and Disney-ABC, which produces the syndicated “Katie” show, said Thursday it will wrap after this, its second season. Shuttering the show was a joint decision, both parties said.

“While production will continue on `Katie’ through June 2014, we’ve mutually agreed that there will not be a third season of the show,” they said.

“Katie” will continue to air through the summer.

The announcement was widely expected. Last month, Couric, 56, announced she is joining Yahoo to anchor an expansion of the Internet company’s video news initiative. She will serve as the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company’s global anchor, a role she described as a “work in progress.”

At the time, she also announced she is leaving ABC, which she joined in the summer of 2011 in an unusual arrangement as a utility player for the news division while getting her syndicated show off the ground.

“Katie” premiered a year later with high expectations. It reunited her with Jeff Zucker, who as executive producer of the “Today” show was in the control room during many of Couric’s star-making years at the NBC morning show, on which she first became a household name.

Couric was co-host on “Today” from 1991 until she left to join CBS in 2006. Zucker served as an executive producer of “Katie” but left to become president of CNN Worldwide this year.

The “Katie” show was poised to fill the huge gap left in the afternoon schedule by Oprah Winfrey, who left the syndicated daytime arena in the summer of 2011 to concentrate on her OWN cable network. But with an average of 2.2 million viewers, “Katie” never emerged as a breakout hit.

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