Savannah Guthrie returned to the Today show anchor desk earlier this month amid the shocking disappearance of her 84-year-old mother Nancy Guthrie, but the ratings did not follow her back the way NBC reportedly had expected.
While there was a small boost among a certain segment of the audience the first week, the effect has not been sustained and there are several theories as to why that has proven to be the case.
On Monday’s show, Megyn was joined by Rob Shuter, author of It Started With a Whisper, to discuss the ratings and why Gurthrie’s return hasn’t been the draw executives hoped for.
The Ratings
Guthrie returned to her job on Monday, April 6, two months after her mother tragically disappeared from her Tucson, Arizona, in the early morning hours of February 1. While that first day back did bump the ratings, the increase was briefer than NBC News expected.
Megyn noted Today ratings were up 6 percent overall the week of Guthrie’s comeback. In the advertiser-coveted 25- to 54-year-old demo, the rise was just 2 percent. “That is not at all what NBC was hoping for,” she said.
Shuter agreed. “I’m hearing from people inside the building that there was a little bit of an opportunity here for for the network to increase their ratings and to get people really behind the Today show, which really is neck and neck with Good Morning America. In fact, there have been some weeks when GMA has even beaten the Today show,” he explained.
According to Shuter, the viewership numbers aren’t the only ones that caught the network by surprise. “The show really thought this was going to be a massive moment. Everybody at NBC thought there were going to be hundreds of people, if not thousands of people, in the plaza,” he said. “They’d hired extra security. They thought that this was going to be like a pop concert, like Justin Bieber was in the plaza. A decent sized crowd turned up, but it was not overwhelming.”
A Tricky Situation
Part of the reason, in Shuter’s view, is the complex nature of the situation. “The Savannah ‘moment’ didn’t quite turn out to be what they wanted it, what they hoped, what they expected it to be,” he said. “And I think that’s because… it’s a really complicated story. It’s a really frustrating story. There are so many pieces of this story that just don’t add up.”
While he noted that NBC was “very happy to do a Dateline special and to promote this on the nightly news and the Today show for weeks and weeks and weeks,” the network has largely backed off covering it. “Now they are not asking the big questions anymore because they are complicated,” Shuter posited. “None of this makes sense.”
Another potential issue, in Megyn’s opinion, is how the audience views Guthrie. “They thought it would be this big bonanza. ‘Savannah is back.’ The problem they have, as I see it, is Savannah was never a big star,” she explained. “People have… great empathy for her, but it didn’t make her a big star, even now, that they really want to watch deliver the news.”
It speaks to the changing landscape of traditional media, specifically morning television. “It is far, far, far from where it was when it was Katie [Couric] and Matt [Lauer] and the morning show wars had genuine, like, celebrities. They became celebrities because the shows were so popular,” Megyn added. “Those days are gone, and so they are just trying to glom onto the former glory and the audience is like, ‘We’re not really into it.'”
Savannah vs. Hoda
But that hasn’t stopped producers from trying to recreate the magic of those years. Shuter has reported that there is “tension” on set between Guthrie and her former co-host Hoda Kotb, who filled in for her during her absence and also recently sat in for current anchor Craig Melvin.
“This is very interesting to me because they have been trying to pitch us for a very long time now about how it’s all a family, and those two are so close,” Megyn said. “We saw Hoda make it all about herself when she interviewed Savannah on her first Interview back. And you are getting to the actual truth, which is: It is not a family; it is a cutthroat, very nasty industry where everyone’s trying to oust everyone.”
Shuter called the morning TV environment “vicious” and “brutal” and said his reporting suggests the issues between Guthrie and Kotb have been years in the making. “Savannah and Hoda have never got along, and it goes back to Matt Lauer,” he said. “My reporting is that Matt did not really like Savannah that much and… wanted to put Savannah in her place. What did he do? He brought out Hoda.”
“When he got fired, Savannah didn’t want Hoda [as her co-anchor]. She wanted Willie Geist,” Shuter alleged. “The first few episodes, it’s not Hoda, it’s Willie, but nobody watched. So, that’s why… [Kotb] got the job.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Shuter by tuning in to episode 1,299 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.