NEW YORK — Monday morning, Meredith Vieira cut
through the reports, gossip, fluff, clutter, buzz and assorted other
pieces of minor background noise about her future … to announce her
departure from “Today” in her own way:” On the air.
These last five years did seem to go by very very
fast, but that’s all due credit to Vieira, who in many ways was one of
the best co-hosts this show has had: Like Matt Lauer, she does the work,
and doesn’t, or rather didn’t, call attention to herself. It was a
calm, quiet, professional tenure and Vieira will certainly be missed.
Her replacement: Ann Curry, as expected.
An interesting thing about Vieira was the sheer
brevity of her tenure. She lasted only five years, and in contrast to
the co-anchor she replaced, never once — once! — attracted the sort of
negative media buzz that occasionally grows into a roar which then
hastens departures. Vieira was calm and steady and ratings were largely
fine. So this then leads to a question: Why leave? She says she wants to
spend more time with her husband, Richard Cohen, the former CBS News
producer who has written about his illness, MS (and of others), in some
memorable best-sellers.
But maybe Vieira just got bored with the grind. This
is a tough show to do — even if the ride is smoothed by a
$10-million-per-year paycheck. The day begins at 4 a.m. EDT and ends
around 6 p.m., if not later. The stories — as news can be — are
sometimes fascinating, but — in servicing the diet of an omnivorous
program that covers everything from OBL to the latest diet fad to
more-often-than-not the prototypical story of a mom whose child as
missing and has since been re-united with her — they can also be
wearying, and mind-depleting.
Maybe she just had enough.
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