When all those athletes from all those nations go marching into South Korea’s Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium for the opening ceremony on February 9, Katie Couric will be there to guide you through it. Not alone, of course. Mike Tirico was previously named a host of the event for NBC, but now Couric will be joining him in the booth, and will contribute reporting throughout the Olympics doing commentary and interviews. She will not, however, be the new Bob Costas in prime time, as that role has already been filled by Tirico.
This will be Couric’s fourth time co-hosting the event for NBC, having done so in 2000, 2002, and 2004 when she was an anchor for Today, but this will be her big return to the network after departing in 2006 to assume anchor duties at CBS Evening News. It will also be her first experience with NBC in a post–Matt Lauer world. She co-hosted Today with him for 15 years before leaving the job, and he was fired from the show last November over accusations of sexual misconduct, some of which allegedly took place during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Couric recently weighed in on the Lauer fallout for the first time, saying, “This was not the Matt we knew,†but adding that the accusations were “disturbing, distressing and disorienting and it’s completely unacceptable that any woman at the Today show experienced this kind of treatment.â€