Tumult continues at 'Today'

NEW YORK - It's rarely a good sign when morning TV hosts painfully banter about whether they are keeping their jobs.

That's where Willie Geist and Natalie Morales found themselves during the most difficult week for NBC's Today show in two years. When it ended, an NBC News executive was fired after two months on the job, and the network was tamping down reports of mutinies, firings, and transfers at the lucrative morning franchise.

It was an unwanted reminder of the ugly removal of Ann Curry from Today in 2012, which helped ABC's rival Good Morning America fly past NBC to the top of the A.M. heap.

Now, NBC News is searching again for an executive to oversee its most important broadcast.

It was considered a coup when NBC lured Jamie Horowitz from ESPN for a newly created job as Today brand manager. Horowitz wasn't to concern himself with filling four hours of television a day, but to look at the big picture. Today was no longer in a free fall, but hadn't made much progress on narrowing ABC's lead.

By all accounts, he was in the midst of studying and creating a plan for the show's future.

The first sign of trouble came with a tabloid report of feuding between Morales and colleague Tamron Hall. That had to anger NBC News president Deborah Turness, who was burned by how the dismissal of David Gregory from Meet the Press played out in a public fashion.

A week ago, Turness announced that Horowitz was out, telling her staff in a memo that it was "not the right fit."

That prompted a flurry of anonymous reports of low morale and backbiting at the show. When it culminated in a story that Geist and Morales were being fired, presumably an idea that predated Horowitz's ouster, Turness issued a strong statement supporting the current Today cast.

"In response to the false rumors that have been circulated about our anchor team, NBC wants to be absolutely clear," she said. "The rumors are wrong - period. This is the team we are committed to."

On-air personnel issues are particularly touchy on morning television, which creates an illusion of "family" with viewers. So it felt like an uncomfortable Thanksgiving dinner table when Hall, Morales, and Al Roker gathered at the anchor desk a day after the debunked report appeared. Geist was on-screen from Brooklyn, where he was reporting.

"When I didn't see you this morning when I walked in, being your usual diva self, I thought you were gone," Hall told him.

"Natalie and I walked in yesterday, looked at each other and said, What are you doing here?" Geist said.

For Turness, on the job for more than a year, the episode could cut one of two ways: She's a strong boss who moved quickly when it was clear something wasn't working, or she made a disastrous personnel choice.

"It depends on her relationship with her management," said Richard Wald, a former network news executive now teaching at Columbia University. "There isn't a simple answer."