From what I understand, the Couric show will be live, so if it were placed in the morning it would be a recording from the previous day. ABC wouldn't let WLS do that. The old Oprah morning slot on WLS is occupied by a local talk/service show.
I don't know where you got that from- "Katie" is going to be syndicated and air in various timeslots around the country, so how is it going to be live? WLS could basically do whatever they want with the show if they wanted to because it's not an ABC network program.
And if it would have become that much of a problem, ABC could simply move it to any of the other Chicago stations, couldn't it?
In the meantime, adding: Jeff Probst is replacing Nate Berkus on WNBC in New York, Ricki Lake is replacing Anderson Cooper on WPIX, and Anderson Cooper is moving to WNYW- don't know who he's displacing, although I'm willing to bet it's going to be Dr. Oz- he's on in a double run and his normal timeslot serves as the lead-in for the 5 PM news and it does well. (Unless, of course, Fox 5 decides to dump one of the court shows it airs.)