KISS-OFF: NBC bosses say Lauer was unfairly blamed for booting Curry, replaced by Savannah Guthrie. (NBC)
(Reuters)
‘FAMILY MATTER’: Matt Lauer, here bidding farewell to a weepy Ann Curry on “Today,” spoke out yesterday about her controversial dismissal. (
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Matt Lauer, facing a backlash over last year’s ouster of co-host Ann Curry from the “Today” show, didn’t want her to have the job in the first place — and had even attempted to get his old co-host Katie Couric to come back instead, it was revealed yesterday.
Couric was interested, but NBC brass eventually rejected the idea, says a report published yesterday in which Lauer makes his first comments about the Curry furor.
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Despite his initial reservations, Lauer told The Daily Beast that NBC alone made the decision to boot Curry and that he himself didn’t like the way it was handled.
Network brass also tripped over themselves in the story trying to distance Lauer from the controversy.
Steve Capus, the former NBC News president, told the news site that he believes Lauer is being unfairly blamed for Curry’s ejection. He claimed Lauer was unhappy to see his friend go.
Now Lauer — who has lost his allies at NBC and is being faulted for the show’s dismal ratings — wants to leave his $25-million-a-year gig, sources told The Post.
“Matt is not happy,” a source said. “He has started saying he wants to get out of ‘Today.’ ”
Another source said Lauer is eyeing an exit when his current contract expires in 2015.
Lauer told the site he was particularly chafed by the way Curry was treated.
“I don’t think the show and the network handled the transition well,” he said. “You don’t have to be Einstein to know that. It clearly did not help us. We were seen as a family, and we didn’t handle a family matter well.”
Capus defended Lauer, insisting the longtime anchor did not make the call to dump Curry.
“When Matt was informed that we had made this decision, his good counsel was to go slow, to take care of Ann and to do the right things,” Capus told Daily Beast reporter Howard Kurtz.
“He was quietly and publicly a supporter of Ann’s throughout the entire process. It is unfair that Matt has shouldered an undue amount of blame for a decision that he disagreed with.”
Capus told Lauer at one point, “You’re taking the hit over something you opposed.”
The article says Lauer offered to quit as ratings plummeted.
Citing Steve Burke, chief executive of NBC Universal, the article said Lauer had gone to him last fall and said, “If you think the show’s better off without me, let me know, and I’ll get out of the way.”
“It was a hard time for everyone,” Lauer recalled. “We were getting kicked around a lot. Some of it was self-inflicted, and perhaps deserved.”
But Burke said he replied: “You’re the best person who’s ever done this. We’ll get through this.”
“In some ways, being No. 2 in the ratings is a real shot in the arm, a kick in the pants,” Lauer said. “It makes you hungrier . . . I don’t think it’s a bad thing to have a fire lit under your ass.”
“I’m not going to whine or get depressed. Who’s going to feel sorry for me? Nobody.”
“I’m the luckiest guy I know.”
The article says Lauer never wanted Curry, who had been the show’s news anchor, as a co-host. Before she was promoted in 2011, Lauer contacted Couric, who had left the show in 2006, to see if she’d be willing to come back.
She was, but Burke nixed the idea after she indicated she’d do it if NBC also bought a daytime program she was selling.
“Today’s” ratings have been tanking ever since. “Good Morning America” led the February sweeps. Locally, “Today” is in a dismal third place, behind “GMA” and Fox’s “Good Day New York.”
Lauer attributed at least some of the drop to his show’s reliance on crime stories, which prompt moms to flip the channel.
Now “Today” is focusing on inspiring stories.
“We want people to feel good about a portion of their morning, and we got away from that,” he said. “The show got a little dour and depressing and dark.”
He said that while he argued against crime stories, “I’ll be perfectly blunt: I was losing a lot of those battles . . . We were driving a certain kind of viewer away.”
Lauer said some NBC execs “felt those things rated well.”
“Even if they popped in the ratings in the short term, they did some damage in terms of trust with our viewers. We got drunk on it,” he said.
Now “it’s a much more positive show, a more uplifting show.”