Katie Couric Talk Show Interview – “Katie” premiers Sept 10 on ABC
This is Part 3 of my Katie Couric Talk Show Interview Series.
Katie Couric Talk Show Interview Part 1
Katie Couric Talk Show Interview Part 2
Looking back, I probably didn’t really blow the Katie Couric Talk Show interview, but it could have gone so much better!
After brief introductions, we were escorted back to a conference room where we passed a courtyard at KTRK – TV ABC 13 complete with swimming pool and lounge chairs. Katie and I both commented on the pool and we were told that it’s never really used and mainly makes a great background for stories (expensive background!).
Once in the conference room, Katie cracked a little joke about being in a meeting saying (in a serious voice), “Let’s talk about the last fiscal year…” while I pulled out my phone with the handy dandy recorder. Only, I opened up Evernote, and didn’t see the recorder on the main screen like I had when I opened it earlier. I showed no fear. I just went with it.
I mentioned that I just got a new phone, and I couldn’t figure out where the recorder is. Of course, Katie looked at me and asked me if I wanted her to help me figure out how to record. She said she was pretty good at figuring them out, and dumb me, said I would go another route with it. Mistake, again. What I should have done was said “Sure. If you don’t mind,” (would have made a much better story), but I didn’t because I didn’t want to waste time!
I just improvised, opened up the camera, put it on the video recorder, hit record, and turned it face down. Another mistake. I don’t know what I was thinking. The only other time I’d ever interviewed a celeb was when I went to New York and interviewed Jared from Subway, and we were able to take pictures and video of him answering our questions!
What does this mean for me (well, and YOU) after the fact? I have no video to show you! DOH!
The Katie Couric Talk Show Interview
One of the things that we chatted about in the interview is how her show is going to cover many different topics. I asked her if the show was going to cover kid and parenting related topics. She told me that as a single mother of two daughters, parenting issues are something she thinks about every day.
Katie says:
“It’s (the show) going to run the gamut. Obviously, I’m very interested in parenting issues, and often time I’ll see stories that I think will be great to focus on for the show. For example, there was a book that came out last year on shyness and introverts, which I thought was interesting. I’m very interested in psychology and developmental psychology, what makes good parenting, and how to do a good job raising your kids.”
I kinda like this topic, as well, because my 8 year old is shy, and I’d love to know more about how to break him out of his shell! I’m actually interested to see if this topic actually does make the show!
Something else Katie touched on was how some people tend to over-parent their kids.
Katie says:
I’m very interested in the whole notion of over-parenting which is getting a lot of attention. It was written about in the New Yorker recently, and Atlantic had a cover story on it. It was sort of a school of thought that we’re doing too much for our kids and over-enabling them so that they don’t grow into the resilient young people we hope they’ll become.
Another topic I can tell she’s pretty passionate about is the unemployment rate for college graduates.
Katie says:
I read recently that young people have doubled the unemployment rate as the national average, and I thought, wouldn’t it be interesting to do a whole show and fill the audience with college graduates who can’t find a job and talk about why. Then of course talk about the boomerang generation where older kids are going to move in with their parents.
We had to rush through our questions, and the good thing is, that it really didn’t matter what I asked, because let me tell you… if there ever was anyone who could rock an interview, it’s Katie Couric. I’m pretty sure she’s seen and heard it all and knows what it feels like to be on the interviewer (is that right?) end of a closed ended question. So, no matter what the question, she answered it, and then continued on with more information and insight than you could have ever asked for!
Then I asked it…. a controversial question that actually pertains to me and a lot (not all) of my readers. My question was, “How will stay at home and work at home moms relate to your show?” What I really wanted to do was finish the question with something like “because you’re a working mom, and many topics may be from your standpoint,” but she cut me off rather quickly! But in actuality, I think she saw it as a debatable question, so she curbed it pretty quickly.
Katie says:
I don’t think we’re going to divide it into stay at home moms vs. work at home moms. I think over-parenting, for example, is a phenomenon that affects both working moms and stay at home moms, probably a little differently, but working moms often compensate for not being there by probably catering to their kids a little too much. It’s more of… taking a step back and looking at parenting. So, I don’t necessarily think it is about stay at home moms or moms who work inside the home vs. moms who work outside the home.
She then started talking about the Anne-Marie Slaughter story about Why Women Still Can’t Have it All. It talks about the topic of having more family friendly policies in the work place.
Katie says:
To me, that’s an interesting topic for any woman, and really any man in this country, because it deals with worker productivity, it deals with fulfillment, and even if women aren’t working outside the home, oftentimes, they’re working inside the home. We’re going to do a whole show on Mompreneurs – women who are making a lot of money, never leaving their house, not having to feel that they are sacrificing raising their kids, who are able to accommodate both sides of themselves.I’m not interested in setting up any sort of dichotomy that will feed into this stupid mommy wars thing, because I think that is so old and tired, and I think everybody really needs to stop judging everybody else and figure out what’s right for them.
In Part 4 of my Katie Couric Talk Show Interview Series, I will fill you in on what Katie had to say when I added to her last comment by changing to moving the conversation in a direction that is more relevant to me and many of my readers:
I said:
Especially after the Time Magazine article came out about Attachment Parenting, because we practice Attachment Parenting, and I looked at it, and I thought, you know, I don’t force myself on people. I have my blog, and I post about my views on parenting, but I don’t force it on people. If you want to read my blog, you can read it. If you don’t, you can go to another blog.
For more information about Katie Couric Talk Show, check her out at the following places!
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Katie Couric is an award-winning journalist and TV personality, well-known cancer advocate, and New York Times best-selling author of The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons From Extraordinary Lives.