TV Column

The second-most drawn-out transition of our time — behind only the Queen Elizabeth-to-Prince Charles throne-of-England handoff — inched forward Tuesday when Katie Couric said she was leaving the “CBS Evening News.”

“After weeks of widespread speculation about her future, Katie Couric is finally ready to go on the record,” People.com reported breathlessly as a windup to its “scoop”:

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“I have decided to step down from the ‘CBS Evening News,’ ” Couric told People.com exclusively.

“I’m really proud of the talented team on the ‘CBS Evening News’ and the award-winning work we’ve been able to do in the past five years in addition to the reporting I’ve done for ‘60 Minutes’ and ‘CBS Sunday Morning,’ ” added Couric — who, coincidentally, should be now be in London to cover the marriage of Prince Charles’s uber-popular eldest son, Prince William, to commoner Kate Middleton!

“In making the decision to move on, I know the Evening News will be in great hands.”

CBS News thinks so, too:

“There’s a lot to be proud of during Katie Couric’s time at Evening News. CBS News, like Katie herself, is looking forward to the next chapter,” the network news division said Tuesday in a statement.

This works out nicely for CBS News, which planned to announce, maybe as soon as next week, that longtime “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley is the Evening News anchor going forward. Couric’s contract on the gig expires in just weeks, and it had been widely speculated that new CBS News Chairman Jeff Fager had other plans for the newscast.

CBS wants to announce Pelley in time to be able to talk him up, and maybe trot him out, when the network unveils its plans for next season to advertisers at its annual Carnegie Hall “upfront” bash on May 18.

Katie’s Tuesday announcement was a bit of a dud, since everyone is already about a lap ahead of her, speculating what will be her next gig.

This week’s betting has ABC in the lead for that honor — if only because ABC stands to lose the most when Oprah hangs up her tiara and resigns as Queen of Daytime Talk TV, to focus her full attention on her ratings-lean OWN cable-network co-venture with Silver Spring-based Discovery Communications.

“Oprah” airs on many ABC stations around the country, including WJLA in Washington. And Oprah gets a lot of credit for bolstering early-evening newscast numbers on those local TV stations, which, in turn, helps ABC’s prime-time ratings.

Syndicators have been chatting up Couric as part of their hunt for The Next Oprah. While “Katie” and “evening newscast” did not turn out to be a great fit, she’s practically legendary as the former Queen of Morning Infotainment TV, having reigned supreme from 1991 to 2006 on NBC’s “Today” show. If anybody can replace Oprah, it’s Couric, syndicators bet, reasonably.

But Couric’s looking for a gig that will also keep one of her feet in the news business, according to nearly all accounts. Can you imagine being the ABC News exec who has to wrangle Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, George Stephanopoulos AND Katie Couric? The mind reels.