By Alexis Tereszcuk
Radar Staff Reporter

Goodbye Oprah, hello Katie!

Television news personality Katie Couric has inked a new deal to come back to daytime television and she’ll host her own talk show on ABC starting in 2012.

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“It is tremendously exciting to have the creative freedom to develop my own show…and to contribute to such a vibrant, innovative news division,” she said in a statement.

Couric, 54, spent the last five years as the anchor of the CBS Evening News, and before that was a viewer favorite on The Today Show.

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Now that Oprah Winfrey has retired, the afternoon spot is open and Couric would be a perfect replacement for the queen of daytime TV.

ABC is the network where Couric first started working and she said “I’m happy to be returning to the network where I began my career as a desk assistant in 1979.”

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Katie Couric is the winner of the distinguished DuPont, Murrow and Cronkite Awards and numerous Emmys. 

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