In June of 2012, a tearful Ann Curry revealed that she was leaving the Today show. The decision to exit clearly hadn’t been Curry’s own to make: \u201cFor all of you that saw me as a groundbreaker, I’m sorry I couldn’t carry the ball over the finish line \u2014 but man I did try,\u201d she told viewers as colleagues Matt Lauer, Al Roker, and Natalie Morales lent moral support.<\/p>\n
To some, that support didn’t seem quite supportive enough \u2014 especially in Lauer’s case. Many viewers placed responsibility for Curry’s awkward ousting and the show’s dwindling ratings squarely on Lauer’s shoulders. Even Al Roker apparently played the blame game; in August, he made a quip about NBC anchors throwing each other \u201cunder the bus\u201d that seemed aimed in Lauer’s direction. (NBC maintained that the joke had nothing to do with Curry.)<\/p>\n
According to an interview with Lauer on The Daily Beast, things got so bad at one point that he told NBC Universal chief executive Steve Burke that he’d \u201cget out of the way\u201d if Burke thought Today would be better off without him. Burke brushed off Lauer’s offer, calling him \u201cthe best person who’s ever done this\u201d \u2014 but even so, Lauer evidently still has some residual guilt over the Curry fiasco.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don’t think the show and the network handled the transition well. You don’t have to be Einstein to know that,\u201d Lauer told the Beast\u2018s Howard Kurtz. \u201cIt clearly did not help us. We were seen as a family, and we didn’t handle a family matter well.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also admitted that initially \u2014 before Curry was even promoted on Today \u2014 he was in favor of bringing on board a different co-anchor: Katie Couric, who was leaning towards returning to Today until her syndicated talk show got off the ground. At that point, Lauer would join her on that show, which the pair would sell to NBC.<\/p>\n
That plan never came to fruition; Burke decided it would be too expensive. So Lauer stuck around and instead welcomed Curry, a Today vet, to the anchor’s desk. It wasn’t exactly a match made in heaven. Early last year, according to the Beast, he learned that NBC’s execs were planning to replace Curry whether or not he stayed on the show. Though Lauer acknowledged privately that he and Curry didn’t have great chemistry, he tried to tell NBC that forcing Curry out would be \u201ca disaster waiting to happen.\u201d His bosses disagreed, believing that Curry’s premature departure would quickly blow over, especially if they presented the exit as Curry’s own idea.<\/p>\n
The gist of the article, though, is that Lauer himself did his best to help Curry through a bum situation. He met with his co-anchor individually and advised her on how to look out for herself; he told NBC’s brass that Curry should be slowly phased out, in order to minimize the disruption. In the end, though, Lauer’s counsel was ignored\u2026 and we all know how that turned out.<\/p>\n
For even more dirt, check out Kurtz’s full piece at The Daily Beast<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In June of 2012, a tearful Ann Curry revealed that she was leaving the Today show. The decision to exit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","1536x1536":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","2048x2048":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-highlighted-post":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-small":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x90.jpg","colormag-featured-image":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-default-news":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","colormag-featured-image-large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-block-extra-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-small-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-medium-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg"},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"Admin","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/53e6cdc30765aade0129f85e5aeb50124b1d3f5bb9a70373be31e4eb328371e0?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":"0","magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"In June of 2012, a tearful Ann Curry revealed that she was leaving the Today show. The decision to exit","magazineBlocksPostCategories":["News"],"magazineBlocksPostViewCount":126,"magazineBlocksPostReadTime":3,"magazine_blocks_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"medium":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg",113,150,true]},"magazine_blocks_author":{"display_name":"Admin","author_link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?author=1"},"magazine_blocks_comment":0,"magazine_blocks_author_image":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/53e6cdc30765aade0129f85e5aeb50124b1d3f5bb9a70373be31e4eb328371e0?s=96&d=mm&r=g","magazine_blocks_category":"News<\/a>","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/72448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}