Nearly six months after Savannah Guthrie, Hoda Kotb were named permanent Today Show co-anchors, the dynamic duo, along with Today show ep Libby Leist and NBC News chief Noah Oppenheim told the AP’s David Bauder they feel the program is starting to hit its stride.
“We’re falling into a rhythm,” Kotb said of her chemistry with her now-not-so-new co-anchor Guthrie. “We understand when the other is going to jump in on something. It’s almost like jumping rope. You start getting the hang of it.”
“The partnership between Savannah and Hoda has worked out in wonderful ways that we expected and wonderful ways that we couldn’t have anticipated,” said Oppenheim. “Building on their partnership, the rest of the show has taken on different colors and textures that are resonating with the audience.”
Guthrie and Kotb were named co-anchors not long after Matt Lauer was fired on November 29 for alleged inappropriate sexual behavior over many years, and the program got off to a surprisingly strong start on the ratings front. It also got additional help from the Winter Olympics. The NBC morning show has seemingly always been No. 1 among adults 25-54 and in the younger demos that mean the most to advertisers.
But the program continues to sit in second place among total viewers, and ratings in the demos have been slipping since February.
As Bauder writes, there’s cause for concern:
One worrisome number for a show that has two women as co-hosts for the first time in its history: since the Olympics, NBC’s viewership among men in the advertising demographic has declined 14 percent compared with last year, while ABC is up 2 percent, Nielsen said.
Guthrie and Kotb were recently featured in People magazine’s 100 Reasons to Love America , coming in at No. 12. “We’re grateful to NBC for not having some old-fashioned notion about what should be,” Guthrie told People. Adds Kotb: “We’re sort of like sisters, and everybody wants a sister.”
Elsewhere on the NBC News morning show front, Willie Geist appeared on Watch What Happens Live last night to chat with Andy Cohen to talk about his podcast – which includes unedited interviews from his Sunday Today program – the new Supreme Court vacancy, and more.