Katie Couric Hints She Praised Erica Hill Ahead Of Early Show Shakeup

CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric tells the New York Post she didn’t have a hand in the decision to replace Early Show co-hosts Harry Smith and Maggie Rodriguez, but she did mention that Erica Hill, who was then at CNN, might be worth watching.

“I first saw Erica on Anderson Cooper,” Couric tells the Post‘s Michael Shain, “and I liked that she was cheeky and seemed to have a sense of humor.”

Shain reports Couric also “mentioned to the bosses that I thought she had a certain something that would do well in the morning.”

Hill, who joined the Early Show as co-anchor alongside Chris Wragge, is working to turn things around at the longtime third-place network morning show:

“It’s not like they said: ‘We’re giving you this job and we expect you by X date to make a change,” Hill says. “That was never part of it.

“But I’m sure that’s the hope,” she says. “We’d be idiots if we didn’t want to move a little bit.

Shain also quotes Anderson Cooper, who worked with Hill on AC 360, as being “incredibly sad” when she left his show and the network. “Erica is able to find chemistry very quickly with other people, and that’s a rare, rare thing.”

Follow us on Twitter.

Sign up for Mediaite's daily newsletter.