Katie Couric shares lighter side on YouTube

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 quietly has been uploading videos to her own channel on YouTube. The clips – so far, 33 – display the mischievous and often hammy personality that she 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, D.C., 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.”

In another clip, she makes an allusion to the pressing questions about her future with the third-place newscast. 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.”

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.

The channel was largely Couric’s idea, in part a reaction to the pirated videos of her that turned up in recent months on comedian Harry Shearer’s site, My Damn Channel, according to people familiar with the project.

“We thought, why let him put stuff out there when we can do it ourselves,” said one producer involved with Couric’s channel.

But it has garnered little notice, perhaps because neither she nor CBS News has done much to promote it. There’s no link for it on CBSNews.com. So far, the channel has logged about 20,000 views (although individual clips separately have gotten more traffic).

Couric seems energized by the possibilities.

During her visit to CNN, she extolled the virtues of YouTube to King: “It’s this channel on the Internet, and you can get all sorts of things on there.”

“Is this our future?” he asked.

“Yeah, actually,” she responded, “I think it is.”