March 29, 2024

At NBC, a Struggle to Revive the Morning Magic

The employees were reassured that “Today” viewers didn’t want their show to turn into “Good Morning America,” the ABC rival that has become Americans’ No. 1 choice in the mornings. But then they were told this: “What matters most is the anchor connection to the audience; what we need to work on is the connection.” As the word “connection” was repeated, some people in the room started to chuckle because of a name that went unspoken: Matt Lauer.

“What they meant was Matt. But no one would say it,” said a senior staff member who, like the others, spoke on condition of anonymity.

Mr. Lauer was not there, but it is clear that the once-popular host’s relationship with his audience is in peril. Last April, Mr. Lauer signed a contract said to be worth $25 million a year, the most lucrative deal in the 60-year history of morning television. And then the bottom fell out.

The following week, “Today” fell to second place in the morning ratings for the first time in 16 years. When his co-host, Ann Curry, was forced out over the summer, it was Mr. Lauer and not network executives who shouldered most of the blame.

Since then, his popularity among viewers has plummeted and NBC has been forced to deny what was unthinkable a year ago: the rumor that Mr. Lauer, 55, who first took over the co-host chair in 1997, could soon be replaced by a younger host like Willie Geist, 37, or David Gregory, 42.

Mr. Lauer’s year is a lesson in how a combination of missteps — NBC’s and his own — can precipitate a star’s fall. NBC News is still, by some measures, the No. 1 network news division in America, and it will emphasize that point at a presentation for advertisers in New York on Thursday. But the continuing struggles of “Today” threaten to overshadow the network’s strength at other times of day.

“Today” pays a lot of the bills for the rest of the news division; it was responsible for roughly half a billion dollars in revenue in 2011. That total dipped by at least $50 million in 2012, according to industry estimates, as “Good Morning America” capitalized on the show’s stumbles. NBC declined to comment. But managers at NBC News were told this week that they would receive smaller bonus checks for 2012 because of the “Today” show ratings slump.

A belated image campaign began this week when Mr. Lauer spoke publicly for the first time about what he thought had gone wrong — namely, that his bosses botched Ms. Curry’s departure from “Today.” Those bosses took pains to suggest that Mr. Lauer wasn’t at fault. But the claim, in The Daily Beast, must have come as news to Ms. Curry, who, according to her associates, still feels betrayed by Mr. Lauer and the top producer of “Today,” Jim Bell, who left the show last fall.

Mr. Lauer’s Q Score — a measure of likability, treated as gospel by the TV industry — has fallen by more than half since he was paired with Ms. Curry in June 2011. It was a 19 that September; by this January it was a 9.

For the first time his counterpart on “Good Morning America,” George Stephanopoulos, has a higher score. For Mr. Lauer “the drop started happening in the beginning of 2012, and it’s slowly eroded since then,” said Henry Schafer of Marketing Evaluations, the company that surveys thousands of viewers to come up with the scores. NBC executives said its focus groups found otherwise.

Ms. Curry has been gone for nine months, yet “Today” is still losing to ABC’s “Good Morning America” by about 800,000 total viewers a day. (In the 25-to-54-year-old group, it is losing by fewer than 100,000 viewers.) The ratings are scrutinized now by NBC and ABC for signs that “Today” is stronger on the days when Mr. Lauer is on vacation.

He is criticized routinely in the media; one columnist this week said simply, “He’s got to go.” And even members of his own staff are sharply divided: some say he, and “Today,” can recover from the last year, while others say his reputation is irreparable.

The employees spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retribution from Mr. Lauer and their bosses. They all agreed that his contract, thought to keep him at “Today” through at least 2014, would be his last.

While “we are aware of all the ridiculous rumors and gossip,” said Alex Wallace, the NBC News executive in charge of “Today,” “we would like Matt Lauer to be in the chair as long as he would like to be. We hope that’s for many years to come.” Mr. Lauer has declined interview requests.

Certainly Ms. Curry’s removal from “Today” hurt Mr. Lauer, just as he privately predicted it would, and just as his best friend, Bryant Gumbel, was hurt 20 years earlier when Jane Pauley made way for Deborah Norville in a similarly operatic situation.

In both Mr. Lauer’s and Mr. Gumbel’s case, NBC failed to shield them from criticism. But something more happened on Ms. Curry’s last day, June 28: seemingly every negative word ever uttered about Mr. Lauer was reprised. While he stayed silent, tabloid Web sites reran old items about his personal life and blogs said he was undeserving of his contract. All of this is still searchable on Google. The top 10 searches for his name include “divorce,” “salary,” “Ann Curry,” and “fired.”

Martin Kaplan of the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism said the suggestion that Mr. Lauer forced Ms. Curry out might be unfair, but it looked that way to many viewers. “TV lives by that illusion” of a family, he said. “Sometimes, it also dies by it.”

What NBC may do next, according to outsiders contacted by the network, is add another cast member to “Today.” Even if the person appeared only on the 9 a.m. hour, which Mr. Lauer is not a part of, such an addition would make “Today” more of an ensemble show, seemingly less dependent on his star power.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/14/business/media/at-nbc-a-struggle-to-revive-the-morning-magic.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Media Decoder: NBC Moves to Shake Up ‘Today’ Leadership

Alexandra Wallace.NBC Universal Alexandra Wallace.

NBC is completing a plan to change the leadership at the “Today” show, the longtime first-place morning show that slid to second place this year during the controversial removal of Ann Curry.

Alexandra Wallace, a senior vice president of NBC News, will be the new executive in charge of all four hours of the highly profitable “Today,” according to people at the network who described the plan on condition of anonymity because it had not been announced. She and a producer yet to be selected will succeed Jim Bell, who has been in charge of the show since 2005. Mr. Bell led the campaign for Ms. Curry’s removal from the show earlier this year and received much of the blame for the damage done by the transition.

After being the No. 1 show for 16 consecutive years, “Today” lost to “Good Morning America” on ABC for a few weeks in April and May.

Ms. Curry — who had been on the job only a year — was replaced by Savannah Guthrie in June. Since then “Today” has lost to “G.M.A.” consistently (save for two weeks during the Summer Olympics) and the reputation of Ms. Guthrie’s co-host Matt Lauer has taken a beating, as many of Ms. Curry’s fans have blamed him for her dismissal.

Because of all the turbulence, the producer change is seen as inevitable in the halls of NBC News. But it is unclear when the changes at the top will take effect. Some people with knowledge of the plan, who said they could be fired if they were identified, cautioned that it was still subject to change.

A spokeswoman for NBC News declined to comment. NBC is part of NBCUniversal, which is owned by Comcast.

According to NBC, Ms. Wallace will be the first woman ever put in charge of the “Today” show — a milestone for the media industry because “Today” invented the morning television format 60 years ago. “G.M.A.” has had a female executive producer on two occasions, and “Today” briefly had a female executive for morning programming, but for the most part men have run the network morning shows, which rise or fall mainly on their ability to get women to watch. Women make up about 65 percent of the “Today” audience and about 70 percent of the “G.M.A.” audience.

The changes are being overseen by Patricia Fili-Krushel, chairwoman of the newly created NBCUniversal News Group, which includes NBC News, MSNBC and CNBC, along with Steve Capus, news division chief.

Stephen B. Burke, the chief executive of NBCUniversal, put Ms. Fili-Krushel in charge of the group in July, and since then she’s been exploring what to do with “Today,” the most valuable piece of NBC News real estate, according to people who have spoken with her.

Ms. Fili-Krushel declined an interview request on Monday. She is expected to pick a day-to-day producer of “Today” under Ms. Wallace and may direct other changes to the show as well.

A shake-up like this one has been rumored about for months — making “Today” an awkward place to work in the meantime. Mr. Bell, who took over “Today” in 2005 and kept it No. 1 until this year, has continued to run the show this fall while fending off rumors about his future there. He had a second job this year producing NBC Sports’ Summer Olympics coverage. Mr. Bell will become the full-time executive producer of NBCUniversal’s Olympics coverage, reporting to the chairman of NBC Sports Group, Mark Lazarus, a spokesman said.

The search for his replacement has been an open secret, even at NBC’s competitors.

“Résumés are flying,” said a senior executive at a competing network. Among those interviewed for the day-to-day job were Izzy Povich, a producer at MSNBC, and Amy Chiaro, a former “Today” show producer who now helps run “The Dr. Oz Show” in syndication. Ms. Povich declined to comment. Ms. Chiaro said in an e-mail that she had “no plans of leaving” “Dr. Oz.”

Ms. Wallace did not respond to a request for comment. She came to NBC in 2005 from CBS, where she was a senior producer of the morning show for that network.

At NBC she produced “Weekend Today” before moving to the evenings, first as an executive overseeing “NBC Nightly News,” then as its executive producer. Most recently she was the top deputy to Mr. Capus. In September he asked her to take over “Rock Center with Brian Williams,” the prime-time newsmagazine that was introduced last year and has struggled to build an audience. She could remain the producer of “Rock Center” while overseeing “Today.”

The new producers will be taking over a morning show that’s not accustomed to losing. But that’s where “Today” finds itself now, having suffered what one executive called a “slow fade” in the ratings that predated Ms. Curry and worsened while she was co-hosting with Mr. Lauer. Her tearful goodbye seemed to tip the scales, sending “Today” deep into second place.

Lately, though, there have been positive signs for “Today”: after losing for 10 consecutive weeks in the category that matters most to advertisers, viewers ages 25 to 54, the show beat “G.M.A.” by a few thousand viewers in the last week of October. “Today” still lost among total viewers, with 5.27 million, compared with 5.49 million for “G.M.A.” The ratings results were incomplete because of show pre-emptions and power failures across the Northeast caused by Hurricane Sandy.

Ms. Curry has not appeared on “Today” for more than a month. She is in charge of a new reporting unit that most recently contributed a story about Sandy’s destruction on Staten Island to “Rock Center.” The executive in charge of Ms. Curry’s unit is Ms. Wallace.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/12/nbc-moves-to-shake-up-today-leadership/?partner=rss&emc=rss