TV viewers may see a reunion of Katie Couric and Matt Lauer on a new daytime talk show, reports today’s Wall Street Journal. Citing unnamed sources, the Journal says Couric and Lauer have discussed the possibility as they both approach the end of their contracts with their respective employers. Couric’s CBS Evening News contract expires in early June; Lauer’s agreement to co-host NBC’s Today lapses at the end of next year. His co-host, Meredith Vieira, is likely to leave the show later this year, according to sources.

From the Journal article:

The stakes of losing both Mr. Lauer and Ms. Vieira are enormous for NBC. Losing two anchors in less than two years could upset the morning-news juggernaut, which is one of the few jewels at the NBC broadcast network. While NBC trails its competitors in the prime-time hours, “Today” has ranked No. 1 in mornings each week for more than 15 consecutive years.

Couric’s show could end up at CBS, NBCUniversal or even Time Warner Inc. Former Today producer and NBCUniversal exec Jeff Zucker is involved in talks about the possible Couric/Lauer reunion, according to the Journal’s source.

Good morning and happy Monday. The Washington Post sparked some conversation with the publication Saturday of an examination of the Post Co.’s Kaplan education division. The successful venture has helped support the Post during tough times but is now facing scrutiny as the practices of for-profit schools get a fresh look from Congress and the Department of Education. That and more news from over the weekend:

• The trials of Kaplan Higher Ed and the education of The Washington Post Co. (via The Washington Post)
• NABJ Pulls Out of Unity Coalition (via Richard Prince’s Journal-isms)
• CBS’s Jan Crawford Named Political Correspondent (via TVNewser)
• Wisconsin biz magazine closes after 21 years (via Talking Biz News)
• Former NBC News correspondent Jennifer London joins HDNet (via TVNewser)
• San Diego Union-Tribune Buys Local Lifestyle Site (via paidContent)

Just what the unemployed need: another reality show to watch while sobbing into their Cheerios.

This one may be useful though – in The Fairy Jobmother, career specialist Haley Taylor comes into jobless people’s lives and helps them turn their careers around. Or, as the release says, Taylor “assists severely job-challenged families with her no-nonsense and tough love tactics to motivate them to get back on the payroll.”

She’s British, so we’re thinking this will be kind of like “Supernanny” for grownups.

The first episode airs Oct. 28 on Lifetime. Enjoy!

CNN sounded like a tough place to work in its early years. Its creator, Ted Turner gave a few inside details of the news network’s struggles as it first began operations.

First of all, it took awhile for the company to become even close to profitable. “We sweated every payroll for seven years,” said Turner in remarks at the Social Good Summit, organized by the 92nd Street Y and Mashable.

But not only was there little money coming in the stress to succeed affected even the higher executives. “During my entrepreneurial career, I wore out four financial vice presidents — one had a heart attack right in my office,” said Turner, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “I had him lay down on the couch, and we got an ambulance to take him to the hospital, and I said, ‘Get me a new financial vice president.’”

That’s rough, but at least he didn’t have to worry about online, social media, layoffs, paywalls and everything else media companies have to ponder. On second thought, maybe Turner just described the ‘good old days.’

ESPN has reversed its decision to allow college football reporter Jenn Brown to promote a brand of beer, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.

Brown had been hired by MillerCoors to promote Icehouse beer. The deal was approved by ESPN, but after the story appeared, ESPN changed its mind.

Last week, Dan Patrick, a radio sports talk host but formerly a SportsCenter anchor, said that when he was at ESPN he acted as a Coors spokesman; the deal had been approved by ESPN at the time. “But Patrick says now that he realized what he had done was a mistake,” writes the Journal Sentinel.

Another reason why the deal may have been deep-sixed is the issue of a college football reporter promoting beer. There’s enough controversy about promoting drinking to college kids to last a lifetime without reporters getting into the mix.

Leave it to a radio host to bash television, but that’s exactly what “This American Life” creator Ira Glass did during a discussion in Seattle, Washington.

Washington News Council John Hamer, in describing the event, wrote:

Describing broadcast journalists, he [Glass] said that they sound like “talking robots….the esthetics of the language is so stiff” He [Glass] called that “one of the reasons why journalism is having such a tough time now.” Television journalism is “doing terribly,” he [Glass] said.”

Glass went on to say that he enjoyed Rachel Maddow and John Stewart while calling Glenn Beck “fascinating.” But Glass also added that, “Opinion in all its forms is kicking the ass of journalism.”

Some interesting television remarks coming from one of the more well respected radio personalities.

(h/t Romenesko)

Starting sometime in the fall, Austin TV station KVUE is adding an hour of news programming—so it will start at 4:30 and run until 7.

The on-air team of Melissa Gale, Olga Campos and Albert Ramon will not change, KVUE’s president and general manager Patti Smith told the Austin American-Statesman.

But the station will hire a number of additional production staff to handle the extra work.

The start date for the expanded newscast will “depend on the hiring process,” so essentially, KVUE is counting on you. The jobs don’t appear to be posted yet but there’s an application you can download at this page.

A former video editor has filed suit against KVVU Channel 5 in Las Vegas, claiming he was fired for complaining about a hostile work environment.

The suit alleges that anchor Rachel Smith harassed Eric J. Schyman in front of coworkers for “wanting to meet Joan Rivers, stating that it must be (Schyman’s) ultimate gay-Jew fantasy,” and remarking that “she was going to write a book on how gay (Schyman) was,” the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports.

The suit also alleges that Smith ridiculed Schyman’s dyslexia and that chief photographer Justin Grant shoved Schyman against a wall “to show how to properly restrain a person.”

Schyman apparently complained to HR about the behavior, and was fired a week later–ostensibly for mailing a video tape to the wrong address, which the lawsuit calls retaliatory.

Proof that Jetblue Steven Slater has created a lasting impression: “grab a beer and hit the chute” has wormed its way into even PBS ombudsman Michael Getler‘s writing.

Getler says that e-mails about The McLaughlin Group are enough to make him want to spectacularly quit, Jetblue style: See, the show isn’t produced by PBS but it airs on 315 of 360 member stations, so people seem to think it’s a PBS program (“and who can blame them,” says Getler). That means lots of angry e-mails to the ombud, even though PBS isn’t, technically, at fault.

And only somewhat relatedly, the same Taiwanese company that made the amazing Tiger Woods reenactment has worked its magic again with Slater’s dramatic exit:

The Atlantic profiled the man behind-the-scenes of all those tabloidesque interviews on news shows today. In it, they describe Larry Garrison‘s role as a “fixer” who connects television hosts with newfound celebrities.

The story talked of Garrison’s attempt to get a couple that believes they found Natalee Holloway’s remains on the ocean floor on Good Morning America. And it discusses his job, which is to make these people thrust into the spotlight comfortable, but also get them on television. Although no one will admit it, he gets paid pretty well by the networks or news programs for the quests.

But, what’s funny, even his job as the underbelly of the interview program has hit a snag during the rise of online content. He’s just not getting paid what he’s used to.

“In the old days,” he [Garrison] told me, networks “paid a lot more money for stories-they’d pay $100,000. Now they don’t [pay the really big bucks] unless it’s an ‘Oh my God’ story-like if I had Tiger Woods’s first interview.”

The Internet has commoditized some of what Garrison does, and competition has become more intense. Gossip sites such as TMZ and Radar Online provide a nonstop fix of tabloid titillation, while anyone with a valuable photograph or video can sell it easily and directly to a photo agency like Splash News.

Man, can no one make an honest living in media these days?