Savannah Guthrie Still Staying Put At NBC News’ ‘Today’
Today co-anchor Savannah Guthrie has signed a new multi-year deal to extend her stay at the morning show for multiple years, press reports are saying today, not to be confused with all those press reports a year ago that Guthrie had extended her contract to stick with Today show for several more years. Since NBC News is declining to confirm the “development,” don’t expect to see an “NBC confirmed” in any of the reports, that instead cite “sources” – or no one at all.
Bottom line: Guthrie, who is out on maternity leave, is not leaving Today, which is not a shocker, if even news, though there is some speculation her new contract puts her paycheck closer to that of the $20 million a year her co-host Matt Lauer’s getting in his new deal, revealed a few days ago, to keep him on the show through 2018.
This heaping helping of harmony, and stability, at the NBC morning show successfully bright-shiny lighted media less than a couple months after the important morning franchise tossed short-timer Billy Bush, who had hosted the franchise’s 9 AM hour.
“NBC News announced last night that Billy Bush would be leaving the Today show effective immediately, noting that he was a valued colleague and a longtime member of the broader NBC family,” host-in-chief Lauer told viewers in mid-October, the morning after NBC News SVP Noah Oppenheim announced to staff, and the media, that Bush was out. He’d been suspended little more than a week earlier, two days after WaPo published an old Access Hollywood tape in which Bush and President Elect Donald Trump got caught on a hot mic, having a lewd conversation about women. In their exchange, then Celebrity Apprentice star Trump boasted he was so famous he could “grab ’em by the pussy” with impunity. Oppenheim, who is the executive in charge of the important morning franchise, had hired Bush last May, in hopes of boosting ratings on Today’s 9 AM hour.
News of Guthrie still staying at Today comes after the morning show won the quarter in the news demo and overall, though ABC’s Good Morning America maintains its total-viewer lead over its NBC rival for the season.
In November of 2015, NBC News spokeswoman Ali Zelenko did “confirm” that Guthrie contract extension, reposting the Los Angeles Times article to her Facebook feed – written by the author of the Today show 60th anniversary coffee table book “From Yesterday to Today: Six Decades Of America’s Favorite Morning Show” – pronouncing it a “smart take.”
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