“Today” Cut Matt Lauer From Their 25 Year Montage
This week started out with Jennifer Lopez saying that her first two marriages didn’t really count. Now the Today show is following suit and saying that flashing sex toy giver and over-all giver of the creeps, Matt Lauer, is being erased from their history (which is hard to do because he was basically the face of the show for 20 years). Today celebrated the 25th anniversary of their move to their current studio (they will really celebrate anything) this morning, and they mentioned nearly every past member of Today, except for Matt Lauer.
According to UPROXX:
Matt Lauer took over as a TODAY co-anchor in January 1997 following Bryant Gumbel’s departure. That’s a few short years after Katie Couric and Gumbel hosted the first-ever episode from the morning institution’s move to Studio 1A in Rockefeller Center, so it’s not up for debate that Lauer — who was fired by NBCn November 2017 for inappropriate sexual workplace behavior — was an integral part of TODAY‘s public image at the current location for two decades. However, no one would be able to guess that fact from the looks of a new 25-year montage released by NBC on Thursday morning.
Look normally I’m a fan of selective memory. Like when you hook up with some douche after a night of too many white wine spritzers, you are allowed to quickly file that under: doesn’t count. If I did montage of my life. there would be endless bad decisions cut from that montage. The difference is, millions of people saw NBC’s decision to keep Matt Lauer on air for 20 years. This wasn’t some one night stand, NBC!! We saw this messiness for years and it’s pretty weird to just pretend it didn’t happen.
Well, Matt Lauer does not qualify as a “special moment” to be highlighted in this video (or at least, no one can spot him), whereas Couric, Gumbel, Al Roker, Savannah Guthrie, Hoda Kotb, Lester Holt, Carson Daly, and more did make the cut. That’s pretty awkward. On one hand, NBC seems to be pretending that Lauer doesn’t even exist, and one can easily understand why they’d want to imagine that’s the case, but that’s not reality. Then again, NBC’s handling of the Lauer mess didn’t arrive without criticism.
I am partly thankful that Today tried to protect us from overdosing on Matt Lauer’s smugness by not including him in montages, but if only they erased Matt Lauer from Today when they got the first few complaints about him. Let’s hope for their sake that he’s still not sending unsolicited notes to Today, because he’s probably got some not so great notes on this one since it’s not like he’s got anything else to do.
Here’s a clip of Today with its Matt Lauer annulment in full effect:
When TODAY first moved to Studio 1A in 1994, it became a place where the team could try new things and connect with viewers.
Take a look back on some of those special moments over the past 25 years. pic.twitter.com/km1cbuMeAB
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) June 20, 2019
Pic: Wenn.com