NEW YORK -- Every weekday evening, Katie Couric is the picture of sobriety on the "CBS Evening News": buttoned-down and earnest.
Viewers who miss the impish humor the anchor exhibited on "Today" probably don't know that it's still possible to catch glimpses of Couric, unplugged -- and in a medium that's light-years away from the staid environs of broadcast news.
Since February, Couric has been quietly uploading videos to her own channel on YouTube. The clips -- so far, 33 -- display the mischievous and often hammy personality that the newscaster doesn't get to show in her current post.
Along with extended material from her CBS interviews, much of the footage consists of behind-the-scenes moments with a lighthearted Couric. During a visit to CNN for an interview in March, she snapped the back of Larry King's suspenders as he escorted her into a studio. On a flight to Washington to interview Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in February, she held a mascara stick and joked that "it takes a village to make this face presentable on television."
The outtakes delight many YouTube users who have come across the channel.
"Love to see the real katie. . . . not the behind the desk robot," read one typical comment posted on the site.
Filmed at a time of feverish speculation about how much longer she will stay on the third-place broadcast, the videos offer a jarring contrast to the recent spate of stories about the grim situation on the "CBS Evening News." In the clips, she chortles and grins widely, whether she's teasing photographers from the New York Post, singing in her SUV or sitting shoeless on the floor of her office talking to mommy bloggers.
Couric, who drew a huge spotlight when she took the CBS anchor post in 2006, has largely avoided interviews since then. (She declined a request for comment on this story.) But in recent weeks, the anchor offered several sharp public critiques of the media, including a video entry on her CBS News blog in which she assailed the press for not calling out the sexism that Clinton confronted in this year's presidential campaign.
Her YouTube videos share the same unrestrained spirit.
In one, she makes an allusion to the pressing questions about her future. As she adjusted her suit before going on the air Super Tuesday, Couric said: "I wore this in 2006, too, and I didn't lose my job, so that's positive."
