Matt Lauer Admits NBC Did a Botch Job on Ann Currty

Tom McCarthy   guardian.co.uk

Matt Lauer insisted he had nothing to do with the messy departure of NBC Today co-host Ann Curry. Photograph: Peter Kramer/NBC        

After months of treating a ratings freefall with stoic silence, NBC has deployed its top news anchor and its loftiest executives to tell their side of a painful recent chapter in the division's flagship morning show, Today.

Matt Lauer, the best-paid personality in US television news, admits the network botched the demotion of his former co-host, Ann Curry, last June. Steve Burke, the NBC Universal CEO, says Lauer felt so bad afterwards that he offered to resign. Steve Capus, the former president of NBC News, says Lauer did not participate in the decision to jettison Curry, despite viewer (and industry) perceptions to the contrary.

The suddenly-effusive explanations fill the Monday column of Howard Kurtz, the media critic of the Daily Beast website. The interviews come days after the announcement that for the first time in 20 years, rival Good Morning America on ABC had won the February sweeps, a crucial period for setting ad rates.

"If you think the show's better off without me, let me know, and I'll get out of the way," Lauer reportedly told Burke last year.

Lauer may have offered to resign, but in his conversation with Kurtz he blames the network, not himself, for trouble at the Today show. Today lost viewers after Curry, a respected 20-year veteran who sometimes failed to gel with Lauer, was abruptly replaced by Savannah Guthrie last June.

"I don't think the show and the network handled the transition well. You don't have to be Einstein to know that," said Lauer, who made a reported $25m last year.

The Daily Beast article appears to mark a concerted effort by NBC to change the perception that Lauer was to blame for forcing Curry out. Steve Capus, the former NBC news president, told Kurtz that Lauer did not participate in the decision to demote Curry, who is now assigned tomiscellaneous projects at NBC.

"When Matt was informed that we had made this decision, his good counsel was: go slow, take care of Ann, and do the right things," said Capus, who announced his own resignation last month.

Today is going through a difficult patch. After 16 years as the top-rated morning show, it began losing the No 1 spot to ABC's Good Morning America last April. The drop was seemingly accelerated by Curry's departure, and the perception among some viewers that she had been let go too quickly.

At the time of Curry's departure last June, the network was under pressure to get its talent lineup in order before the Olympics, which it had paid $1.18bn to broadcast.

NBC's problems are not confined to the Today show: last month the network fell to fifth place in the ratings for the first time ever, finishing behind Spanish-language Univision.