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’s living rooms. Long before podcasts popularized pop sociology terms like “parasocial relationship” or ballooned into marathon video sessions to be passively consumed while going about one’s routine, morning shows like NBC’s “Today” 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.
Since Sunday, the real-life family of “Today” anchor Savannah Guthrie has been enduring an unimaginable tragedy: the abduction of Guthrie’s 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’s Rockefeller Center studio since. Her only public statements have come via her Instagram: one a request for her fans to pray on Nancy’s behalf, the other a tearful video recorded jointly with Guthrie’s siblings asking the abductors to provide proof of life and reach out directly with next steps.
But “Today” itself has continued on, with Sheinelle Jones filling in for her colleague in the show’s first hour alongside Craig Melvin. To watch the show this week has been to watch “Today” cover a news story that is also a deeply personal, upsetting event — for the “Today” 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: “Sending love, my friend.” Fellow anchor Jenna Bush Hager has been more openly emotional still, recounting a vigil in Nancy’s honor on Thursday through visible tears.
Guthrie has served as a steadying presence since her initial promotion to co-anchor of “Today” 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 — until 2017, when Lauer’s 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’s entrusted with co-hosting the annual Thanksgiving Day Parade telecast, one of the most high-profile events on television.
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 “Today” before and after the death of her husband from cancer last year. (Guthrie at the time used decidedly familial language around Jones’ return, saying, “We cannot wait to welcome Sheinelle home.”) Along with Melvin, Jones has opened each installment of the show with a segment dedicated to the ongoing search for Nancy, extending “thoughts and prayers” to “a beloved member of our ‘Today’ family,” accompanied by clips and images of Nancy’s appearances on “Today” over the years.
Jones, Melvin and the “Today” 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, “Today” 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’s own video plea, pointing out its tactical intent to “humanize” Nancy, whose captors might otherwise view her as “just an object.” The interview was informative, but also juxtaposed strangely with the interviewers’ 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.
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, “Today” network NBC announced the end of “The Kelly Clarkson Show” — 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 “Today” coverage of Guthrie’s 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 “Today” 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.
English (US) ·