14 DAY TRIAL // After New York Times’ cover story about Matt Lauer’s dwindling popularity, the Lauer brand is taking another hit from a story in the New York Mag which explains how he made sure Ann Curry would be fired and then prepared to jump ship as well, by negotiating his move to ABC.
In an 8-page piece, Joe Hagan writes about how Lauer refused to help Curry because “he simply didn’t like her” and how he prepared for the backlash by meeting with ABC bosses to leave NBC.
NBC had told him that he could consider the option, but they never imagined he’d do that because they did not want him to leave. Instead, they would get Ryan Seacrest.
However, Hagan writes, Lauer got busy immediately, working on an “idea for ABC: the Katie Couric daytime talk show with Matt Lauer—together again. Lauer met with Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, ABC’s parent company, who made a strong effort to recruit Lauer.”
“There were issues of both timing and money, but the larger corporate strategy was clear: If ABC could poach Lauer, then Today, NBC’s cash cow, would fall from its perch, Good Morning America would be ascendant, and the entire NBC network would crumple like a house of cards,” Hagan argues.
“The ABC deal, in its final form, would feature Lauer in a dual role: co-host of the daytime program with Couric and also as an ABC News personality,” he writes.
Precisely when ABC was thinking the deal was done, Lauer called to say he wasn’t leaving.
However, that’s just one of the many details included in the cover story: go here to read it in full, especially if you’ve been keeping an eye on Lauer and the Ann Curry scandal.