It may very well be the worst spent $15 million in television history.

Lightweight liberal Katie Couric is likely to leave the CBS anchor chair once her contract is up in June. Howard Kurtz:

One strong contender if Couric vacates the anchor chair in early June, as now seems almost certain, is veteran newsman Scott Pelley. The 60 Minutes correspondent has long been a favorite of Fager, who doubles as the show's executive producer. But with Fager taking a methodical approach to his first major decision, Pelley is not a lock. A few short weeks ago, the expectation in the Couric camp-after discussions with top CBS management-was that she would sign a new deal to stay in the anchor's job through the 2012 elections as she figured out the next phase of her career. But the thinking on both sides has now changed as Couric has aggressively tested the waters-and found substantial interest in her services.

After jumping from the Today show in 2006, Couric realized what many skeptics had predicted, that a 22-minute newscast was confining and gave her little opportunity to showcase her interviewing and ad libbing talents. She is now exploring daytime or syndication deals-including with CBS, whose chairman, Les Moonves, remains a strong supporter. CBS is hopeful about finding a way to keep Couric, but her team is also talking to her former network, NBC; to ABC, and to Time Warner.

From the moment she sat down for her first broadcast, it was excruciatingly obvious that no only wasn't she qualified, but that her airhead personae would drive viewers away in droves. Shockingly uninformed, her anchoring election coverage in 2008 was embarrassing. Her interviews, vapid. Her asides, banal. At the end, no one remembers what a big star she was on the Today Show.

She would make the perfect daytime talk show host. The only question is would she be more like Oprah or Jerry Springer?