The Today Show has always been part hard news, part talk show, and part entertaining fluff.
In its nearly 70 years, the only thing that really seems to change is the rotating cast
of broadcast journalists, thanks to some real-time drama.
Here are the scandals that rocked the line-up.
The Bryant Gumbel memo
In late 1988, Today Executive Producer Marty Ryan asked anchor Bryant Gumbel to write up
an assessment of what he thought worked and didn't work with the show.
That's some standard workplace stuff, except that Gumbel's four-page memo leaked to the
media in February of '89.
"Ever find out who leaked it?"
"No."
As the LA Times reported, Gumbel's thoughts on his show and his coworkers, which his coworkers
got to read, were astute, darkly funny, and also, just plain mean.
"John, look who I found!"
"Who is that fellow?"
"Spielberg has nothing to worry about."
"Look who I found!"
Gumbel criticized Willard Scott, the jovial weatherman and the guy who gave shout-outs
to viewers on their 100th birthdays, as a colleague who…
"Holds the show hostage to his assortment of whims, wishes, birthdays, and bad taste."
"Happy Birthday, happy birthday, 103 years old today."
He recommended Scott be banned from the show's hard news-packed first hour, which Gumbel
predicted Scott would find upsetting, a feeling that didn't truly matter, because Gumbel claimed
Scott couldn't quote "leave this job and…get a better one."
Consumer reporter David Horowitz was what Gumble called "a walking cliché," and Gumbel
wasn't at all a fan of film critic Gene Shalit's celebrity interviews.
Except for some backstage personnel changes, things eventually blew over at Today, at least
as far as Gumbel was concerned.
He stayed with the show until 1997, nearly a decade after he wrote that catty memo.
Jane Pauley is forced out
Since 1976, Jane Pauley had served as the co-anchor of Today, consistently leading the
show to the top of the ratings.
In 1989, however, she abruptly left with two years still on her contract.
She reportedly saw the writing on the wall and opted to quit instead of getting fired.
She told Life magazine,
"I had no idea what I wanted to do, but choosing to go was surely better than being told to
go."
In 1989, NBC execs had added newsreader Deborah Norville to Today.
A former anchor on NBC News at Sunrise, Norville didn't sit behind a desk, which was the Today
show custom up to that point.
Instead, she appeared right next to Pauley and Gumbel as an equal.
Speculation and rumor held that Pauley, in her late thirties at the time, was about to
get pushed aside for the younger, bubblier, and blonder Norville.
One bit of evidence was that NBC paid Norville $1 million a year, and Pauley got $1.2 million.
"The transition from Jane Pauley to Deborah Norville was much bumpier than anticipated."
When Pauley quit, she was indeed replaced by Norville, but fearing another network could
poach her for their own morning show, NBC tried to keep Pauley happy and in-house with
a series of prime-time specials and a news magazine show called Real Life.
Deborah Norville's hot minute
The revolving door of Today hosts in the early '90s is one of NBC's most famous personnel
debacles.
And the show experienced some growing pains after Norville controversially replaced Jane
Pauley.
In the first year or so of the Norville era, Today never finished first in the morning
news show weekly ratings, according to the LA Times.
Viewers flat out didn't like Norville, or they didn't like her as much as Pauley, or
they didn't like how NBC handled the situation, in which they appeared to let industry gossip
control the narrative.
The whole thing apparently translated into the show subsequently dropping behind ABC's
Good Morning America, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Norville told the outlet,
"I got bruised badly.
I was hurt because there were members of the press whom I had considered friends who didn't
bother to call me, never tried to verify stories that were absolutely untrue."
"I've, I've never really spoken about what was going on behind the scenes in any detail...I
felt very wounded when I left NBC."
But it got worse.
In the spring of '91, while Norville was on maternity leave, NBC announced that she had
decided to quote "focus her next year on motherhood."
Her replacement: substitute anchor Katie Couric.
Tom Cruise vs. Matt Lauer
In 2005, actress Brooke Shields revealed in her memoir, Down Came the Rain, that she had
taken antidepressants to help with postpartum depression after the 2003 birth of her daughter.
Soon thereafter, Tom Cruise tore into Shields, calling her "irresponsible" for promoting
antidepressants.
He told Access Hollywood,
"When someone says [a mood stabilizer] has helped them, it is to cope, it didn't cure
anything.
There is no science.
There is nothing that can cure them whatsoever."
Cruise advocated for quote, "vitamins and exercise," which is in line with the teachings
of the Church of Scientology, of which the actor is a famous adherent.
"I've never agreed with psychiatry, ever.
Uhhhh...Before I was a Scientologist I never agreed with psychiatry."
A few weeks later, Cruise sat down with Matt Lauer on Today.
But when Lauer broached the Brooke Shields medication topic, and pressed about the possible
benefits of psychiatric drugs, Cruise countered with a rant about Ritalin, explaining that
he knew things that Lauer clearly did not.
"Do you know what Adderall is, do you know Ritalin?
Here's the problem.
You don't know the history of psychiatry.
I do."
Lauer pointed out that Shields hadn't taken antidepressants against her will, to which
Cruise famously accused the Today host of being "glib."
"You don't even, you're glib.
You don't even know what Ritalin is."
The ill-timed Kris Jenner interview
On September 11th, 2012, the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President Barack
Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama led a national moment of silence beginning at 8:46
a.m.
And while Good Morning America and This Morning both aired the ceremony, the Today show definitely
didn't.
"Yes, I had my implants done in 1989, and that was a long time ago."
According to Fox News, during the national moment of silence, Today's Savannah Guthrie
was interviewing Keeping Up with the Kardashians star Kris Jenner.
Only NBC's New York affiliate cut away from the Jenner interview for a remembrance from
Ground Zero.
In the wake of backlash, then-president of NBC News, Steve Capus issued a memo to those
stations which aired the Jenner interview, writing,
"Yesterday, we made an editorial call resulting in the September 11th moment of silence not
being seen.
While we dedicated a substantial amount of airtime to anniversary events, we still touched
a nerve with many of your viewers…and for that we apologize."
Billy Bush and the Trump tape
Entertainment journalist and omnipresent TV show host of the 2000s, Billy Bush has now
been closely linked to three American presidents.
"I've never really faced any kind of adversity, and then all of a sudden, yeah, it's a cannonball
through the side of the ship."
George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush are his cousins, and then, in 2016, a tape leaked
of Billy hanging out with Donald Trump while making a segment for Bush's show, Access Hollywood.
The tape depicted Trump boasting to a laughing Bush about how he liked to grab women and
kiss them, which the then-candidate for president dismissed as quote, "locker room banter."
Trump went on to win the 2016 presidential election while Billy was suspended from his
job as a Today co-host, and then straight-up fired.
"NBC News announced last night that Billy Bush would be leaving the Today Show effective
immediately."
Seven months later, Billy semi-apologized, telling The Hollywood Reporter,
"Anyone who is participating in that moment is going to get it.
In that way, I deserved it.
Judgment day arrived all of a sudden and very quickly, and it is my own personal hell that
judgment day was solely based upon a bad moment 12 years ago and not the complete evolution
of the man.
But that's my own private cross to bear and my own issue to work through.
It does not in any way excuse the moment on that tape and the way people reacted because
I completely understand it."
Tamron Hall's fast exit
Tamron Hall joined the NBC family in 2007, where she wrote and delivered news for cable
and broadcast shows such as Countdown with Keith Olbermann, The Big Picture, NewsNation
with Tamron Hall, and Today's Take, the 9 a.m. hour of Today, making her the first African-American
woman to anchor Today.
But in February 2017, NBC shook up the nine o'clock hour again and brought in Fox News
star Megyn Kelly to helm the time slot.
Rumor had it that rather than be publicly forced out of her job, Hall quit Today, effective
almost immediately.
"As some of you may have heard by now, our good friend Tamron Hall has decided to leave
NBC News."
But she didn't just walk away from Today; she left the entirety of NBC, saying in a
statement:
"The last 10 years have been beyond anything I could have imagined, and I'm grateful.
I'm also very excited about the next chapter.
To all my great colleagues, I will miss you and I will be rooting for you."
The Matt Lauer scandal
After taking over for Bryant Gumbel in '97, Matt Lauer dominated morning TV until 2017,
at which point NBC paid him an astounding $20 million annual salary, according to Fortune.
But his career came to an abrupt halt that November after an NBC internal investigation
of a female colleague accused him of quote, "inappropriate…behavior during the 2014
Sochi Olympics."
Subsequent investigations by Variety and The New York Times found that as many as eight
women had been allegedly victimized by Lauer, including former Today staffer, Addie Zinone.
"And he said, 'I hope you don't take me to personnel for saying this.'
So there was some sort of, from him, knowing that this is crossing a boundary."
After being immediately fired, the disgraced TV host issued a statement in which he apologized
for some of his actions but denied others.
He said,
"There are no words to express my sorrow and regret for the pain I have caused others by
words and actions.
To the people I have hurt, I am truly sorry.
As I am writing this I realize the depth of the damage and disappointment I have left
behind at home and at NBC.
Some of what is being said about me is untrue or mischaracterized, but there is enough truth
in these stories to make me feel embarrassed and ashamed.
I regret that my shame is now shared by the people I cherish dearly."
Passing on Megyn Kelly
In October 2018, NBC confirmed that Megyn Kelly's run as host the 9 a.m. hour of Today
was over.
The decision followed Kelly's remarks during her October 2018 broadcast about controversial
Halloween costumes.
"You do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface for Halloween,
or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween, like, back when I was a kid that
was okay."
The backlash was so severe, including that from her NBC colleagues, that Kelly emailed
an apology to her staff, then tearfully apologized to her entire viewing audience the next day.
"Good morning everyone and welcome to the show.
I'm Megyn Kelly, and I wanna begin with two words: I'm sorry."
It would be her last live segment on the show, ever.
But the writing may already have been on the wall for Kelly.
As The New York Times pointed out, her Today ratings weren't impressive enough for the
network brass to support her through such a storm.
This is likely due to several other boat-rocking moments the former Fox News anchor caused,
like her coverage of the Matt Lauer scandal, and her implication that NBC mishandled an
internal investigation into their decision not to run Ronan Farrow's expose on Harvey
Weinstein.
The silver lining for Kelly?
NBC News reported she got to keep the $69 million owed to her thanks to her three-year
deal.
Ann Curry's "professional torture"
Ann Curry snagged the co-anchor seat on Today in 2011.
According to The New York Times reporter Brian Stelter's deeply sourced account, Curry's
quote "ambition" to lead a news program at NBC was "legendary," taking her nearly 20
years to achieve.
But one year later, she was gone, ousted in what Stelter called a quote "public-relations
debacle" that "deeply [damaged] the most lucrative franchise in television news."
"And for all of you who saw me as a ground-breaker, I'm sorry I couldn't carry the ball over the
finish line, but man, I did try."
Citing sinking ratings and Curry's apparent unease with lighter gossip topics, NBC brass
informed Curry she was being transitioned to the role of "global anchor," removing her
from daily hosting duties, and allowing her to tackle more serious topics.
However, Stelter alleged that behind the scenes, Matt Lauer and programming execs, who reportedly
didn't like Curry, fomented an uncomfortable work culture, one that Curry allegedly described
as quote, "professional torture" as well as a "boys' club atmosphere."
"I mean, I want to be honest and that is that, I mean, it hurt a lot to feel that you weren't
wanted anymore."
The ratings dip ruse revealed itself immediately as viewers bailed on the show after Curry's
exit, and she spent years apparently languishing in her new role before leaving the network
for good in 2015.
Upon Lauer's downfall in 2017, Curry returned to the spotlight in an interview with rival
network CBS, saying in reference to her time at NBC,
"The fact that we are moving against this imbalance of power is absolutely overdue."
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