There’s no denying even from NBC that it mishandled the whole Ann Curry ouster as Today Co-host.
Fellow c0-host Matt Lauer made his most extensive comments to date on the matter to Howard Kurtz and the Daily Beast.
It’s an apparent effort to turn around Lauer’s sagging image and the fortunes of the once rating king of the morning news show circuit.
“I don’t think the show and the network handled the transition well,” Lauer tells Kurtz. “You don’t have to be Einstein to know that. It clearly did not help us. We were seen as a family, and we didn’t handle a family matter well.”
To much of the public eye, fans of the Today blamed the whole mess on Lauer himself, who was seen as orchestrating the whole Curry ouster. Lauer’s image took such a beating that Kurtz reports he offered to resign to NBC Universal Chief Executive Steve Burke. It was an offer Burke immediately refused.
Sources also told Kurtz that Lauer was not thrilled with the idea of co-hosting with Curry and reached out to Katie Couric to return to Today.
The idea was for Couric to come back to Today while she worked on getting a syndication deal for an afternoon talk show. Lauer even considered joining Couric on the afternoon show. The plan was offered to NBC but the network nixed the plan and Couric’s show as too costly. Instead Couric ended up being signed by ABC.
You can read a lot more about Lauer’s interview with Kurtz on the Daily Beast