NBC is mum on Curry, ‘Today’

By David Bauder

AP Television Writer

NEW YORK

Ann Curry showed up again for work at NBC’s “Today” show Friday as the network maintained its silence on reports that she’s about to be replaced.

Curry was in her familiar co-host role with Matt Lauer on Friday, helping introduce musician Kenny Chesney for a performance outside the show’s Rockefeller Center studio.

NBC reportedly is discussing a plan to remove her as co-host a year after she replaced Meredith Vieira. After 16 years of unquestioned dominance in the morning, “Today” is in a tough fight with ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Veteran Washington lawyer Robert Barnett, hired by Curry to represent her in talks with NBC about her future, also had no comment Friday.

It is making for another awkward transition at a network that prides itself on smooth ones, recalling the memorable few weeks shortly before Conan O’Brien was kicked out as host of the “Tonight” show.

When she appeared on the air Thursday, less than 24 hours after reports she would lose the hosting job surfaced, Curry had one apparently unintentional indignity piled on. At one point as her picture filled the screen, a graphic beneath her face read: “Here Today, Gone Tomorrow.”

Meanwhile, the Ladies’ Home Journal released excerpts of an interview Curry had conducted earlier for the magazine’s August cover story, where she said it was hard not to take it personally when questions about her performance surfaced during this spring’s ratings competition with ABC. “Good Morning America” in April ended a “Today” winning streak in the ratings that stretched back to 1995 and has won three other weeks since.

She said she’d love to be on “Today” for 20 years. She started as a news anchor in 1997.