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  • 3 weeks later...

So Savannah got married this weekend and announced she is 4 months pregnant. Congratulations to her. I find it hilarious how she did it, if you didn't see, they played the NBC News Special Report music and then they announced her "breaking news" that she is pregnant.

 

What I really want to get to though is that, it's probably obvious Natalie will take her spot while she is on leave but who do you think will sub as news anchor? Ann Curry ;) Seriously though, Willie? Carson? Tamron? What do you think?

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So Savannah got married this weekend and announced she is 4 months pregnant. Congratulations to her. I find it hilarious how she did it, if you didn't see, they played the NBC News Special Report music and then they announced her "breaking news" that she is pregnant.

 

What I really want to get to though is that, it's probably obvious Natalie will take her spot while she is on leave but who do you think will sub as news anchor? Ann Curry ;) Seriously though, Willie? Carson? Tamron? What do you think?

 

I personally want to say congrats to Savannah (who btw is my Women Crush Wednesday, every week). I was thinking about who may fill her place and I thought one of two things will happen. #1 Two ladies will rotate by week (possibly Erica, Tamron, or even Jenna Wolfe) or they will get 1 lady to fill the position the whole time. I dont think they will do Natalie, because then it will really throw a curveball at viewers.
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I personally want to say congrats to Savannah (who btw is my Women Crush Wednesday, every week). I was thinking about who may fill her place and I thought one of two things will happen. #1 Two ladies will rotate by week (possibly Erica, Tamron, or even Jenna Wolfe) or they will get 1 lady to fill the position the whole time. I dont think they will do Natalie, because then it will really throw a curveball at viewers.

 

The last thing the Today show should be doing is "throwing curve balls at viewers." They should be choosing someone who is part of the show already and the viewers already know as part of Today. That person is Natalie. And I'm sure Natalie would have a fit if she wasn't given the anchor seat, as most in that position would. The only person that would get it before Natalie would be Meredith (or Katie) but she is starting a new show in the Fall so I doubt she will want to spend her time the summer before anchoring.
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1. Meredith's not going to do it. The last thing they want to do is remind viewers of supposed "happier" times. And Katie? Really?

 

2. We (myself included) went through this two years ago when Robin Roberts was going to be off that long period of time, and we were wrong. NBC's not going to get overly creative with this, no dream teams or blasts from the past. They're going to keep it simple.

 

Plain and simple, Natalie and Tamron will take the big chair in Savannah's absence. The other will read the news. Willie or Carson might fill in for Natalie a couple times, and maybe the show will do a 2-man anchor team with Matt once or twice for fun, but I even doubt that.

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The maternity leave will be no where near as long as Robin's medical leave. Therefore there's really no need to bring anyone from outside the show to fill in when there's Natalie and Tamron and maybe occasionally Hoda and also the show has no momentum that would necessitate big names filling in.

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1. Meredith's not going to do it. The last thing they want to do is remind viewers of supposed "happier" times. And Katie? Really?

 

Katie was a joke and Meredith was "The only person that would get it before Natalie" if she really wanted to.

 

 

1. Meredith's not going to do it. The last thing they want to do is remind viewers of supposed "happier" times. And Katie? Really?

 

2. We (myself included) went through this two years ago when Robin Roberts was going to be off that long period of time, and we were wrong. NBC's not going to get overly creative with this, no dream teams or blasts from the past. They're going to keep it simple.

 

Plain and simple, Natalie and Tamron will take the big chair in Savannah's absence. The other will read the news. Willie or Carson might fill in for Natalie a couple times, and maybe the show will do a 2-man anchor team with Matt once or twice for fun, but I even doubt that.

 

Completely agree, there will be no "curveballs to viewers."
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Pretty Much Natalie and Tamron will be the main fill-ins with Erica and Hoda occasionally filling in. I was completely surprise more with the pregnancy and when she announced it on the show this morning it all made sense. I was saying to myself her mid section was getting a little pudgy but just thought she gained a few extra pounds.

 

I do wonder if they are going to pull an Deborah/Katie situation. I know its not likely for them to replace Savannah with someone else (I truly think Tamron is gunning for that position) but with Today desperate to be number one again, they may do some more personality changes. Well that's me reaching but my team would be Tamron and Willie/David Gregory, with Natalie (news anchor), Sam Champion and Carson (orange room and entertainment). I think its time for Matt and even ole' Al to leave and bring in the new blood because I hate to say it Matt is the problem at Today but if they want to continue to be number two keep the show the way it is.

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  • 1 month later...

This wouldn't surprise me.... it looks like Katie Couric may be returning to Today as a fill in for Savannah while she is on maternity leave.

http://www.tvnewsinsider.com/22809

 

 

If this happens, I honestly would not expect Savannah to return as co hose after her leave. It would probably be like WCBS just did with Alex Denis and Jill Nicolini where Jill came in doing traffic while Alex was on maternity leave and now Alex is back doing something else.

 

Hell, Savannah could come back as host of Meet the Press if NBC wants to kick David Gregory to the curb.

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I just wrote about this here: http://jmanmediazone.blogspot.com/2014/05/could-katie-couric-be-headed-back-to.html

 

There's no way Couric replaces Guthrie even if she brings the ratings up, NBC has already learned their lesson about uprooting talent. Guthrie is the future of the show.

 

How long would Couric and Lauer honestly be able to do that nosebleed time slot if she were named anchor? Don't forget she's a Yahoo employee now and they don't want anything that would be harmful to that position.

 

She'll most likely become a contributor with her own segment weekly and it'll be interspersed with her Yahoo shows somehow.

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I just wrote about this here: http://jmanmediazone.blogspot.com/2014/05/could-katie-couric-be-headed-back-to.html

 

There's no way Couric replaces Guthrie even if she brings the ratings up, NBC has already learned their lesson about uprooting talent. Guthrie is the future of the show.

 

How long would Couric and Lauer honestly be able to do that nosebleed time slot if she were named anchor? Don't forget she's a Yahoo employee now and they don't want anything that would be harmful to that position.

 

She'll most likely become a contributor with her own segment weekly and it'll be interspersed with her Yahoo shows somehow.

 

Not to be anal about the piece that you wrote but you mentioned that NBC is within a few thousand viewers of GMA and looking through ratings reports I can't find a period other than the Olympics in which the gap between number 1 and 2 has been fewer than 500,000-600,000, this past week the gap was nearly a million.
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It would seem to make more sense for Meredith to do it as a way to promote herself for her upcoming talk show. That being said, maybe planning for the show will leave her too busy to step into Today. Who knows.

 

 

Don't forget she's a Yahoo employee now and they don't want anything that would be harmful to that position.

 

Yeah, it seems like Couric even substituting on Today might be complicated given the partnership between Yahoo and ABC News.

 

On a separate note, they have a long list of internal candidates who are more than able to sit in for Savannah. Seems like it might send the wrong message to them and to some loyal viewers to bypass all of them in favor of Katie or Meredith, although if it's all about ratings, that might not be a factor in the mind of execs.

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I just wrote about this here: http://jmanmediazone.blogspot.com/2014/05/could-katie-couric-be-headed-back-to.html

 

There's no way Couric replaces Guthrie even if she brings the ratings up, NBC has already learned their lesson about uprooting talent. Guthrie is the future of the show.

 

If the ratings do skyrocket while Guthrie's gone (which I believe they will), then I would say if she's the future of "Today," the person who hired her to replace Curry needs to be fired (if he/she hasn't left already).

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Here's my insight.

 

GOD F***ING DAMMIT.

 

I think what I said originally still applies. That and I have a couple more things to write since a lot of news happened today. So, most of the original post follows.

 

---

 

From Deadspin.

 

ESPN vice president Jamie Horowitz, the midwife of Bristol's "Embrace Debate" era that made us all a little dumber, has been approached by NBC to take control of the [/size]

Today show, according to two sources. A deal appears likely, we're told, though Horowitz still has to extract himself from his contract with ESPN. At the moment, one source says, ESPN president John Skipper is trying to coax a sizable ransom out of Comcast, NBC's parent company. The source put the chances of the deal going through at "70-30 or 65-35."[/size]

 

It's not clear what Horowitz's new position would be. We're told that Don Nash would stay on as [/size]Today's executive producer and that Horowitz would oversee him.[/size]

 

You know how I said Bristol has been more toxic to the medium of journalism than anything Fox News and MSNBC have ever, ever done?

 

Meet exhibit 1. Jamie Horowitz. A fast-rising producer at ESPN who took over First Take and turned it into a screaming debatefest with Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith. For those not familiar with First Take, it is pretty much the worst sports show ever produced. But people are watching. And it infected the already toxic culture of Bristol so much that the station is pretty much unwatchable.

 

This is a must-read, and a depressing one, but it illustrates how toxic the show is and how it ruined ESPN.

 

Why does any of this matter? For one thing, journalism is in the company's DNA. It's no exaggeration to say that the modern ESPN was built on top of its robust news division. When now-executive editor John Walsh—an editor at the Washington Post's Style section in its heyday, an editor at '70s-era Rolling Stone, and a founding editor of the short-lived, much-loved Inside Sports—arrived on Bristol's campus in the late 1980s, he declared that a strong newsroom would give the station the identity it had lacked to that point. As he staffed up, Walsh cared more about reporting chops than TV readiness: Andrea Kremer (hired from NFL Films), Robin Roberts (from local TV and radio in Atlanta), Peter Gammons (from The Boston Globe and Sports Illustrated), Jimmy Roberts (from ABC News), Chris Mortensen (the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The National). Print people? Some inexperience? Didn't matter. Talent did.

The story of ESPN's Tebow obsession really begins last year. In September 2011, ESPN2's First Take, having gone through several different lives (a faint imitation of a morning TV show, a debate-cum-variety show), went to an all-debate format starring former newspaper columnist Skip Bayless. This new iteration wasn't all that popular with other producers in Bristol, a source said, but the decision was made after ESPN consulted a focus group.

"We focus-grouped it to people and realized pretty quickly that viewers wanted debate," hot-shot First Take producer Jamie Horowitz told Men's Journal. "In particular, they wanted to see Skip debate."

Producers around the network saw it the same way a lot of us do: as willful crap. Staged disagreement. On the show, Bayless would be pitted against another panelist—often a black counterpart, including Stephen A. Smith, who is now the full-time co-host—and "debate" him or her, Crossfire-style, on the sports topic of the moment. Around the time that Bayless become the country's most visible and outspoken Tebow supporter—which ultimately spawned this abomination and the 4 million clicks that went with it—ratings for the show began to climb.

Jamie Horowitz is successful at ESPN. He is so successful that I go out of my way to avoid ESPN on anything relevant to sports.

 

I might be overhyping this, but I believe his appointment is nothing less than a catastrophic blow to American journalism. Expect the show to chase the next Tebow, or any crime story that's not relevant to anything, to the bottom. You think NBC News was worried when MSNBC began to take a left turn? NBC News will be severely hurt by a Jamie Horowitz Today Show.

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Not to be anal about the piece that you wrote but you mentioned that NBC is within a few thousand viewers of GMA and looking through ratings reports I can't find a period other than the Olympics in which the gap between number 1 and 2 has been fewer than 500,000-600,000, this past week the gap was nearly a million.

 

Thanks for the correction

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If he's so bad then what is it that NBC saw in him?

Yep because NBC's judgement is absolutely spectacular. How are Jane, Conan and Ann doing right now? If you want to see why he's so bad check out First Take tomorrow morning.
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