The journalist who wrote the New York Magazine cover story dissecting the Ann Curry saga on Today says the whole episode was “too much for the execs and NBC” to handle.”
Joe Hagan appeared on Huff Post Live and provided some insight into the controversy that he didn’t touch on in his article.
“Matt Lauer and some of the managers at NBC News, the executive producer of the Today show, were all kind of on the same page as to what was the problem with the show and they all had determined early last year that Ann Curry was not working on the show,” said Hagan.
“She’d only been there six months when they started to make this determination. So they had to very carefully go about figuring out how to take her off the show. This was happening at the same time that Matt Lauer was trying to negotiate his contract with NBC, so there was this very careful dance going on over how to keep Lauer at the network and take Ann Curry off the show. So this turned out to be too much for the execs and NBC to handle and it kind of blew up in their face.”
Hagan says ratings had already begun to soften on Today before Meredith Vieira left the show. In the last year, Today has lost 800,000 viewers and has been overtaken by Good Morning America as the number one network morning show.
Hagan dishes a lot more including why he thinks Curry has come out a winner on Huff Post Live,