Many workplaces sell themselves as a family, but broadcast morning shows are somewhat unique in doing so on live TV for hours each day, beamed into people\u2019s living rooms. Long before podcasts popularized pop sociology terms like \u201cparasocial relationship\u201d or ballooned into marathon video sessions to be passively consumed while going about one\u2019s routine, morning shows like NBC\u2019s \u201cToday\u201d had filled that essential role for decades. Anchors play an almost parental part, presiding over a crew of correspondents and acting as a stabilizing force amid the tonal extremes of daytime infotainment, which can veer from geopolitical crisis to lighthearted human interest within minutes.<\/p>\n
Since Sunday, the real-life family of \u201cToday\u201d anchor Savannah Guthrie has been enduring an unimaginable tragedy: the abduction of Guthrie\u2019s 84-year-old mother Nancy from her home in Tucson, Arizona, who remains missing as of this writing. Guthrie has been understandably absent from the show\u2019s Rockefeller Center studio since. Her only public statements have come via her Instagram: one a request for her fans to pray on Nancy\u2019s behalf, the other a tearful video recorded jointly with Guthrie\u2019s siblings asking the abductors to provide proof of life and reach out directly with next steps.<\/p>\n
But \u201cToday\u201d itself has continued on, with Sheinelle Jones filling in for her colleague in the show\u2019s first hour alongside Craig Melvin. To watch the show this week has been to watch \u201cToday\u201d cover a news story that is also a deeply personal, upsetting event \u2014 for the \u201cToday\u201d personalities, and also for the audience accustomed to seeing them as a jovial team to whom projecting camaraderie is part of the job. On Monday, Jones directly addressed Guthrie through the camera after she and Melvin provided a sober update on the situation: \u201cSending love, my friend.\u201d Fellow anchor Jenna Bush Hager has been more openly emotional still, recounting a vigil in Nancy\u2019s honor on Thursday through visible tears.<\/p>\n
Guthrie has served as a steadying presence since her initial promotion to co-anchor of \u201cToday\u201d in 2012, a hiring that thrust her into the uncomfortable position of smoothing over the disastrous pairing of Matt Lauer and Ann Curry that ended with Curry being pushed out. Guthrie proved a more natural fit for the warm, inviting tone of morning TV than her predecessor, and successfully moved the show forward with minimal friction \u2014 until 2017, when Lauer\u2019s firing for a pattern of sexual misconduct in the workplace once again called on Guthrie, along with her new co-anchor Hoda Kotb, to assure viewers they were still in capable hands. Over nearly 15 years, Guthrie has grown so essential to the NBC brand that she\u2019s entrusted with co-hosting the annual Thanksgiving Day Parade telecast, one of the most high-profile events on television.<\/p>\n
Now, Guthrie has been subjected to a nightmare that demands her full attention, leaving her co-stars to serve the role she once did as steps away from duties like regular hosting or covering the imminent Winter Olympics in Italy. Jones herself has experienced a tremendous personal challenge in public, having taken time away from \u201cToday\u201d before and after the death of her husband from cancer last year. (Guthrie at the time used decidedly familial language around Jones\u2019 return, saying, \u201cWe cannot wait to welcome Sheinelle home.\u201d) Along with Melvin, Jones has opened each installment of the show with a segment dedicated to the ongoing search for Nancy, extending \u201cthoughts and prayers\u201d to \u201ca beloved member of our \u2018Today\u2019 family,\u201d accompanied by clips and images of Nancy\u2019s appearances on \u201cToday\u201d over the years.<\/p>\n
Jones, Melvin and the \u201cToday\u201d producers have presented these heartfelt expressions of solidarity alongside objective reporting. Enlisting NBC News correspondent Liz Kreutz to deliver dispatches from the ground in Tucson as well as law enforcement and intelligence reporter Tom Winter for in-studio analysis, \u201cToday\u201d has been placed in the position of covering one of its marquee news presenters as a news story in her own right. On Thursday, former ATF special agent in charge Jim Cavanaugh was called on to assess Guthrie\u2019s own video plea, pointing out its tactical intent to \u201chumanize\u201d Nancy, whose captors might otherwise view her as \u201cjust an object.\u201d The interview was informative, but also juxtaposed strangely with the interviewers\u2019 intimate connection to the case at hand. So did the transitions to other current topics throughout the week, from winter storms to the Grammy Awards to the upcoming Super Bowl.<\/p>\n
Broadcast news as a medium is currently in an embattled moment. Newly installed CBS News head Bari Weiss has been moving fast and breaking things in her short time on the job; earlier this week, \u201cToday\u201d network NBC announced the end of \u201cThe Kelly Clarkson Show\u201d \u2014 not a news product, but a daytime talk series that exists along the same spectrum of lighter, personality-led digests as morning shows. But the \u201cToday\u201d coverage of Guthrie\u2019s plight underscores the strength of the connections, both internal and external, that have made morning shows a firmament of culture for so many years. Even the inevitable awkwardness of \u201cToday\u201d as we await crucial updates is the magnified reflection of the universal, familiar process of having to press on at work while navigating the worst at home. A figurative family can still follow the contours of a literal one.<\/p>\n
Source: RhinoEasy News<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Many workplaces sell themselves as a family, but broadcast morning shows are somewhat unique in doing so on live TV<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhinoeasy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}