Today

NBC’s Today has introduced new motion graphics that embrace the show’s sunrise and build upon recent changes at Nightly News. Debuting with the Monday, July 31, edition of Today, the design pays homage to the program’s iconic sunrise logo, with its arcs and curves integrated throughout the broadcast design package.

Dylan Dreyer, meteorologist for NBC’s Today, co-anchor of the show’s third hour and host of Earth Odyssey in the network’s The More You Know block talks about how to weave climate change into weather reporting and what she gets out of making a good, old fashioned nature show. A full transcript of the conversation is included.

The award recognizes a program’s “iconic impact on both the media landscape and the public imagination.”

Hoda Kotb returned to Today on Monday, telling viewers that her extended absence was due to her three-year old daughter’s health issue. “My youngest Hope was in the ICU for a few days, in the hospital for a little more than a week,” Kotb said at the start of the broadcast. “I am so grateful she is home. She is back home. I was waiting for that day to come, and we are watching her closely. I am just so happy.”

Today co-host Hoda Kotb has been absent from the show due to a “family health matter that she has been dealing with,” co-host Craig Melvin said on the show on Wednesday. Kotb made her last live appearance on the show on Feb. 17.

There was a morning scramble Tuesday on NBC’s Today, but no cooking segment involved. The morning program had to move fast in replacing one of its co-hosts while on the air after it was discovered that Savannah Guthrie tested positive for COVID-19. Guthrie was forced to abruptly vacate her anchor chair this morning, leaving Sheinelle Jones with the task of handling her flagship morning news show duties.

The program’s long-running co-host — who made her last live appearance on Today and Today with Hoda and Jenna on Friday, Feb. 17 — was MIA again Monday morning. (Kotb was present for the Feb. 20 Presidents’ Day episode of Today with Hoda and Jenna, but that episode was taped on Feb. 17.) Kotb’s respective co-hosts, Savannah Guthrie and Jenna Bush Hager, have not addressed her disappearance on air, beyond saying she is “out.”

NBC’s Today show announced that weatherman Al Roker will be returning to the program on Friday, Jan. 6. Roker, 68,  was hospitalized in November with blood clots in this legs and lungs. He missed covering the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade for the first time in more than 25 years.

Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager are pushing for a shake up in their morning routine. Last week, the duo led their 10 a.m. hour of Today in front of an audience gathered in NBC’s Studio 6A, a big change for a program that usually is closed off from crowds. They got to award luxury vacations to audience members who had been through hardship or emotional moments, and interact with viewers they would normally never see. The experience left the two hosts feeling such a burst of energy that they are trying to make the in-house crowd a regular feature of their show. “It adds energy and juice,” Kotb says.

After years spent battlingABC’s  Good Morning America, the venerable NBC morning news franchise is now eyeing the crowds that flock to consumer publications like People, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping and Vogue. On Tuesday, the morning-news mainstay will unveil its first digital cover story, an in-depth look at creator and actor Issa Rae that will get exposure not only on its digital site, but on the linear TV show and across its social channels. The belief is that a series of deep-dive stories on newsmakers and cultural figures launched via the show’s digital channels will lure new audiences interested in lifestyle and consumer news.

Never count out Today in the morning show wars. The venerable NBC a.m. franchise has for weeks been losing a critical ratings category to its main rival, ABC’s Good Morning America. The ABC show has long been the most-watched broadcast-TV morning-news program in the nation, while Today typically dominates among the viewers advertisers want most — people between 25 and 54. But for more than two months, that hasn’t been the case; GMA has taken the lead in both overall viewership and the ad demo. Last week put the brakes on ABC’s progress.

The ABC News program typically wins the biggest audience among morning-news programs, while NBC News rival Today typically dominated in the critical category of viewers between 25 and 54 — the demographic that governs how much advertisers pay for each show. Last week, however, GMA prevailed in both, the first time in more than four months that it has done so.

“Her whole family has it. You know how it is. Everyone gets it, they quarantine, and then 5 days later, everything’s going to be just fine,” Hager’s co-host Hoda Kotb said during Wednesday’s show.

Savannah Guthrie has tested positive for COVID-19. The Today show anchor shared her breakthrough case to Hoda Kotb at the top of NBC’s morning show on Monday. Guthrie, whom Today reported is vaccinated and has received a booster shot, shared that she has felt mild symptoms. “Little sniffles, not much more than that,” she said.

Hoda Kotb has tested positive for COVID-19 amid a surge of cases in New York City over the last month. The Today anchor’s breakthrough case was first reported on the NBC morning show Thursday, with co-anchor Craig Melvin confirming the news on air. “She tested positive for COVID but Hoda tells us that she’s doing just fine, and we look forward to having her back very, very soon,” Melvin said during the show’s third hour.

NBC already produces more hours of Today every week than there are in the primetime schedule of its broadcast rival, Fox. But in recent months, NBC News has been expanding morning TV’s longest-running national program into something quite different. Today producers estimate on a weekly basis they are making 200 on-air segments, 35 streaming shows, 200 digital videos, 23 podcast episodes and 10 TikToks. The result? Executives believe Today, outfitted with an “All Day” video-streaming service, can compete with other big lifestyle media outlets.

Daytime TV veteran Talia Parkinson-Jones has been named the new executive producer of the fourth hour of NBC’s Today show, placing a new supervisor atop an hour that helps the network reach critical morning audiences.

Scott began his 65-year career at NBC as an entry-level page at at NBC-owned WRC Washington, D.C., and rose to become the weather forecaster on the television network’s flagship morning show for more than three decades.

Joanne LaMarca Mathisen, the spirited executive producer behind the fourth hour of NBC’s Today morning franchise, plans to step down from the role later in August. In a memo issued to staffers on Thursday, Libby Leist, an SVP at NBC News who oversees Today, said LaMarca was eager to spend more time with family, and had initially taken the job in 2019 with the intention to stay for a year.

NBC’s Today has long been part of many an American morning ritual. Starting today, however, fans of the program can truly interact with a full version of it at almost any time they want. NBC News is launching its venerable A.M. franchise in podcast form, meaning that people who may want to know what it is going on with the show can find it at times and in ways of their own choosing, not necessarily in the 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. block it runs in each weekday on NBC.

The coolheaded co-anchor survived a turbulent decade on NBC’s morning program, which is now adapting to the new TV landscape.

Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb are, for many, a morning habit. NBC hopes the Today pair will soon become an afternoon or evening one for a different kind of viewer. Starting June 8, the duo will take the network’s nearly seven-decade-old Today show into new territory. The pair will add to their on-screen duties by anchoring a half-hour “highlights” recap meant to bring the most recent Today news to streaming audiences.

For generations of Americans, the morning shows on ABC, CBS and NBC have been habitual places to turn to for some news and a check of the traffic and weather as they got ready for work and hustled the kids off to school. Yet who cares about the traffic and weather if you’re not leaving the house? Viewership is down at all three programs, although to be fair, it is for television in general. But for the morning shows, the loss hits hardest among viewers aged 25-to-54 —- working people. In that age group, viewing dropped 22% between the first three months of 2020 and this year at Today, 24% at Good Morning America and 16% at CBS This Morning, according to Nielsen.

Former CNN Great Big Story VP Ashley Codianni is joining NBC as executive editor of Today Digital, and Missy Dunlop Parsons is being promoted to executive producer of Today All Day, the morning show’s 24/7 lifestyle streaming channel. In this new role, Codianni will manage the Today.com editorial and social teams, working in tandem with the Today broadcast team to highlight programming across all our digital platforms.

Al Roker returned to the Today show on Monday morning, two weeks after undergoing surgery for prostate cancer. “I’m back! I’m so excited to see all of you,” the 66-year-old meteorologist wrote on Instagram.

The Today anchor announced Tuesday night via Instagram that she would be broadcasting from home beginning Wednesday. Hoda Kotb will still be live from Studio 1A. “I’m staying home because I have a mild sore throat and runny nose,” Guthrie posted.

Today’s Al Roker and Craig Melvin are taking time off after a colleague on the third hour of the show contracted coronavirus. Anchors Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb announced the news on Monday morning — while practicing social distancing themselves and sitting apart. The stars said Roker and Melvin will be off the air for just a day as a precaution.