Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

NBC ya later — Ann Curry let down by bosses

Tattle doesn't watch "Today" or any other morning television, so we have no dog in the Ann Curry fight. But we think she's getting a raw deal. Not moneywise, where she'll get more dough to transition from a job than virtually any of us will make in our entire lifetimes for actually keeping a job.

Snoop Dogg: His Norwegian cousin Sniffer Dogg detected weed in his luggage. 

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Snoop Dogg: His Norwegian cousin Sniffer Dogg detected weed in his luggage. ASSOCIATED PRESSRead more

Tattle doesn't watch "Today" or any other morning television, so we have no dog in the Ann Curry fight. But we think she's getting a raw deal.

Not moneywise, where she'll get more dough to transition from a job than virtually any of us will make in our entire lifetimes for actually keeping a job.

But hanging Curry out to dry because "Today" isn't garnering the ratings it did when Barbara Walters and Frank McGee were on the air is like blaming a reporter because newspaper circulation is down.

Curry dutifully read the news on "Today" for 14 years, occasionally leaving the office to report or to sub on the couch. When Meredith Vieira left in a blaze of glory — huge party, gifts, one moving tribute after another — NBC bumped Curry up. Now they don't like her anymore and somehow it's her fault.

It's sort of like making a longtime relief pitcher a starter and then cutting him when his fastball dies in the fourth inning.

If Curry didn't have on-air chemistry with Matt Lauer, as has been said, why didn't someone pick up on that in the 14 years they worked together?

This wasn't Simon Cowell auditioning judges for "X-Factor." Curry was there the whole time.

There's a longtime saying in the Newspaper Guild that most workplace problems are not worker problems; they're management problems — or more accurately, lack-of-management problems. Curry's situation at "Today" seems a perfect example of this. Not only are NBC execs saying the decision to promote Curry only one year ago was a bad one, it was an expensive one. The Peacock Network will now pay her millions of dollars to not host "Today."

And she still gets to go to the Olympics.

Seems as if someone higher up than Curry should have been weeping Thursday on "Today" before that person was walked out of the building with his belongings by a pair of security guards.

Instead, it was a tearful Curry saying, "This is not as I expected to ever leave this couch."

Her departure ended a week's worth of awkward television, in which the Internet was full of details about how NBC was dumping her.

"I'm sorry I couldn't carry the ball over the finish line but, man, I did try," she said Thursday morning.

No reason to feel bad for Ann Curry — she's rich, pretty and will land somewhere if she wants.

But there are a lot of Ann Currys out there — both men and women — who are also the victims of mismanagement, and they don't have millions to fall back on when they get the shaft.

TATTBITS

Colin Callender, a producer behind Nora Ephron's new play, "Lucky Guy," says he is "committed" to getting the biography of newspaper columnist Mike McAlary on a Broadway stage despite the death this week of the playwright.

In a statement, Callender says his team "can think of no more fitting tribute to her extraordinary writing and remarkable body of work" than to proceed with plans to produce Ephron's play.

"Lucky Guy" follows the story of McAlary, a tabloid reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for his coverage on the police brutalization of Abner Louima. McAlary died later that year of colon cancer at age 41.

Bruce Springsteen is being recognized for his creative and philanthropic contributions by the group that puts on the Grammy Awards.

The Recording Academy announced Thursday that Spring- steen has been named its 2013 MusiCares person of the year. The Boss will be feted at a private fundraising-dinner ceremony on Feb. 8 in Los Angeles.

Recording Academy president Neil Portnow called Springsteen a "renaissance artist of our time, a national treasure, and an exemplary humanitarian." Springsteen has won 20 Grammy awards during his nearly 40-year career.

Southwest Airlines plans to sell live television service on five planes and expand it to more aircraft by mid-July.

"Hey, what are you watching?"

"Some breaking-news story about a crisis aboard some Southwest Airlines plane."

Commense panic.

Norwegian media are reporting that Snoop Dogg was briefly detained in Norway after entering the country with marijuana and a large sum of cash.

Customs officials decline to confirm the report, saying only that an American artist entered Norway with a small amount of marijuana that was detected by a sniffer dog.

(Wouldn't Snoop's life be easier if he traveled with his own personal sniffer dog?)

The northeast Georgia home owned by country singer Kenny Rogers that was scheduled to be put up for auction has been sold.

Grand Estates Auction Co. in Charlotte, N.C., says Rogers sold the house and its 150 acres Wednesday for $2.25 million.

A 5,681-square-foot-house, a 2,675-square foot pool, an 8-acre lake, horse-riding trails, go-cart track and other amenities on 150 acres for only $2.25 million?

Is the house falling apart?

Is it built on a Superfund site?