Matt Lauer Firing Caps a Difficult Time at NBC News
The first two hours of “Today” — Mr. Lauer’s showcase — generated $508 million in revenue last year,
more than the amount brought in by the other network morning shows, according to Kantar Media.
Senior executives at NBC News made the decision to fire Mr. Lauer, the face of “Today” for two decades, late Tuesday night.
Colleagues of Ann Curry, who served alongside Mr. Lauer as the co-anchor on “Today” from 2011 to 2012, said
that she was undermined by male colleagues during the time after she had risen to a prominent role on the show.
That windfall was $100 million more than the earnings at ABC’s “Good Morning America,”
and nearly three times greater than the revenue from “CBS This Morning.” In recent months, the dollar figure was only tracking higher: Through the first half of 2017, revenue for “Today” was on the upswing once again, according to Kantar.
Mr. Lauer, 59, had a greater impact on “Today” than Mr. Rose had on “CBS This Morning,” however.
All that came to an end on Tuesday night, when he joined the roster of powerful men in the media and entertainment industries — a list
that includes the late Fox chairman Roger Ailes, the former Fox News Channel prime time host Bill O’Reilly, the film mogul Harvey Weinstein, the political reporter Mark Halperin and many others — who lost their positions as a result of accusations made against them by numerous women, the majority of them co-workers or job seekers.
That was when the NBC News president, Noah Oppenheim, called two of his “Today” show anchors, Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb.
Mr. Trump, who starred in “The Apprentice,” a long-running hit for NBC, has in the past
singled out the network’s news division in his criticism of American media outlets.
