A little over a month ago, Savannah Guthrie returned to The Today Show.
She had been away from NBC’s flagship morning show for a little over two months, grappling with her mother’s disappearance.
There was a lot of anticipation about her return to the desk.
But a jarring new report says that NBC felt so disappointed by the episode that some wish that she’d remained off the air for a little while longer.
Her absence was never supposed to be about ratings
According to a report from RadarOnline, both viewers and even some colleagues haven’t welcomed back Savannah as warmly as one might have assumed.
She returned to The Today Show on Monday, April 6.
On-screen, everyone seemed glad to have her back — even as they felt respectfully heartbroken over her family’s loss.
Reportedly, her comeback did not draw morbidly curious crowds that some of NBC’s bigwigs had expected.
Maybe it was that Nancy was (and is) still missing. Maybe it’s just that we live in chaotic times. But Savannah’s return almost felt like business as usual to some.
“The show really thought this was going to be a massive moment,” an alleged source told RadarOnline.
“Everybody at NBC thought there were going to be hundreds of people, if not thousands of people, in the plaza,” the insider continued.
“They’d hired extra security,” the source claimed. “They thought that this was going to be like a pop concert, like Justin Bieber in the plaza.”
While a “decent” number of fans showed up in person, it wasn’t a stampede.
And the six percent boost in viewership from the previous week meant that the numbers “were not up like the show thought it would be.”
We of course cannot verify the report from the alleged insider
As you can see, people were overjoyed to see Savannah return.
She was also tearful, not only during her interview with Hoda Kotb, but at times during her return.
After all, she didn’t step away from the show to go on vacation. Her mother disappeared on February 1 following a violent kidnapping.
It is not unreasonable to assume that Nancy Guthrie died very early into her disappearance, but we don’t know for sure.
In fact, that uncertainty makes all of this so painful. Savannah and the rest of her family do not yet have closure. Many fear that this will never change.
Even now, there are some sick and twisted individuals spinning conspiracy theories about Nancy’s disappearance. Some even blame Savannah.
We get it — it’s not exciting for a low-level criminal to kidnap a news anchor’s mom, botch the job, and go to ground while incompetent federal authorities go to party it up at the Olympics for some reason.
But evil is so often banal. The truth does not have to be exciting — and it seldom is.
We don’t believe that Savannah or her comeback were responsible for the ratings only being slightly higher.
The Today Show mostly exists to be background noise and “company,” especially for older folks. These would be the individuals most invested in the Guthrie case.
Some shows have a finite audience — especially in the age of streaming.