• by Wayne Friedman , September 19, 2018

NBCUniversal wants to build up its daytime syndication talk efforts with a “The Kelly Clarkson Show,” set to debut in fall 2019.

Clarkson, the high-profile, Grammy-winning singer who won the first “American Idol” competition in 2002, will host a one-hour Monday-to-Friday talk show.

She will also return as coach for Season 15 of NBC’s music competition series “The Voice.” 

Initial deals have the talk show sold to 11 NBC-owned stations: WNBC New York, KNBC Los Angeles, WMAQ Chicago, WCAU Philadelphia, KXAS Dallas-Fort Worth, KNTV San Francisco, WRC Washington DC, WTVJ Miami, KNSD San Diego, WVIT Hartford and WBTS Boston.

Those stations cover nearly 30% of U.S. TV households.

On 10 of 11 stations, “Clarkson” will get a key lead-in time slot running before Warner Bros’ “Ellen” daytime talk show. The exception is WBTS Boston.

Earlier this year, NBCUniversal cancelled “Harry,” hosted by singer/musician Harry Connick, Jr., after a two-year run. Rerun episodes for the most recent week September 3-9, averaged 676,000 Nielsen viewers.

This is down from averaging 1.175 million viewers for a three-month period a year ago -- September to December 2017. And it is lower than the first three months of its initial season in 2016, which averaged 1.64 million viewers.

For the most recent week for this season -- September 3-9 -- NBCU's best syndication talk shows viewing results included: “Maury” at 1.6 million viewers; “Steve” at 1.48 million; “Steve Wilkos” at 1.42 million; and “Jerry Springer” with 1.37 million.