NEW YORK (AP) – No, Katie Couric didn’t suddenly lose 20 pounds.

The incoming “CBS Evening News” anchor appears significantly thinner in a network promotional magazine photo thanks to digital airbrushing.

The touched-up photo of Couric dressed in a striped business suit appears on the inside of the September issue of Watch! which is distributed at CBS stations and on American Airlines flights.

CBS News President Sean McManus said he was “obviously surprised and disappointed when I heard about it.”

The original picture was snapped in May and was widely circulated to the media as an official photo of Couric.

Couric, 49, said she hadn’t known about the digitally reworked version until she saw the issue. The former NBC “Today” show co-host told the Daily News, “I liked the first picture better because there’s more of me to love.”

Gil Schwartz, executive vice president of communications for CBS Corp., said Wednesday in a phone interview that the photo alteration was done by someone in the CBS photo department who “got a little zealous.”

But he dismissed any notion of heads rolling over the matter.

“I talked to my photo department, we had a discussion about it,” Schwartz said. “I think photo understands this is not something we’d do in the future.”

He said the photo department “services tens of thousands of photographs every year” for all parts of the company and that it “does a fantastic job.”

“The article that accompanies the picture is very responsible, very interesting,” he added.

Schwartz said the magazine has a circulation of over 400,000.

While expressing regret, McManus tried to make light of the matter.

“I’ve asked that three inches in height be added to my official CBS photo,” he quipped to the News.

Couric debuts in the anchor’s chair Sept. 5. CBS has spent millions on marketing to prepare viewers for her arrival.

—

WILBERFORCE, Ohio (AP) – Dave Chappelle doesn’t regret his decision to walk away from a $50 million deal to continue his hit Comedy Central television show. However, he might miss the money.

Halting his “Chappelle’s Show” last year was “one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life,” the 33-year-old comedian said Tuesday while addressing the opening convocation at Central State University.

“Now, economically it makes no sense at all,” he added.

His sudden “spiritual retreat” to South Africa on the eve of his show’s third season left the series in limbo. He has since returned to performing standup and released the concert documentary “Dave Chappelle’s Block Party.”

Chappelle, who lives near the southwest Ohio village of Yellow Springs, encouraged students not to compromise their values.

“It’s good to have a vision for your life, but your moral conduct and your moral code should be priceless,” he said. “You should just have some values that you just hold, that you won’t sell at any price.”

Central State’s marching band played before Chappelle’s hour-plus talk. The band was featured in the “Block Party” documentary.

—

GRETNA, La. (AP) – An appearance by Corey Miller at a Hurricane Katrina documentary premiere in New Orleans has led a judge to put the rapper on full home confinement until his second trial on a second-degree murder charge.

Miller, 35, is awaiting a retrial in the 2002 shooting of a 16-year-old boy outside a nightclub in Harvey. His original conviction was overturned after a judge ruled that prosecutors had withheld the criminal backgrounds of key state witnesses from the defense.

On Tuesday, State District Judge Martha Sassone said she had planned to put Miller on partial house arrest, but changed her mind after she saw the interview at the Aug. 16 premiere of Spike Lee’s HBO documentary, “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts.”

“You’re on home incarceration to prepare for a defense, not to have a social life,” Sassone told Miller.

Miller, who now uses the stage name C-Miller, was originally put on 24-hour house arrest in March when he was released from jail. On July 13, Sassone gave him a 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew and ordered him to remain within Orleans and Jefferson Parishes.

House arrest was reinstated in August by a state appeals court, which said Sassone needed to have a hearing on state objections to Miller’s release from full house confinement to a curfew.