(ASSOCIATED PRESS) — NEW YORK — It’s rarely a good sign when morning television hosts are painfully bantering 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. At its end, 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 morning heap.
“It’s reopening the same wound,” said Shelley Ross, a veteran producer who ran morning shows at ABC and CBS.
