How will the Vieira era be different from the Couric era? Meredith has only been on the Today show for one morning, but so far, the answer is: steamier. We should remember–and a bio reel prepared by Today took pains to remind us–that she’s a serious newswoman, having 60 Minutes on her resume alongside The View and Who Wants to be a Millionaire. But, she reminded us, "I’m a journalist, yes, but I’m also a woman. And I’m not ashamed of being a woman."
The occasion was Matt Lauer’s showing off the 1988 Esquire magazine photo in which Vieira famously showed off her newsworthy legs in a slit skirt. This morning, she was much more conservatively dressed in a black pant suit, but she also showed off the provocative tart-tonguedness she displayed for nine years around the View table. Showing Matt Lauer a bare-chested swimming photo of him in People–in a clip, President Bush asked Lauer for his autograph on it–she teased, "He’s turned on by your abs, honey!"
Millions of viewers have drifted away from Katie Couric since her first CBS show, but if she starts calling heads of state gay on the 6:30 news, dude, I am so there.
If Katie Couric, to fall back on cliche, fell into the girl-next-door mold, then Vieira is in the best-friend’s-hot-mom mold. She’s the woman next door, not just in personal style but in tone. There were some first-day jitters–she blew her first throw to commercial, but laughed it off–but she came off confident and adult. I’m anxious to see her do news interviews with nonjournalists, but she did well enough talking to NBC’s Tim Russert about Iraq’s effect on the upcoming elections, even if he seemed to be working too hard to build her up. ("That’s the magical question–you’ve put your finger on it!") And she seems assured enough of her stature not to tone down the old View irreverence too much. "I’m going to be the broad in broadcasting," she declared. (She seemed a bit shunted aside, though, grouped with Lauer, Ann Curry and Al Roker hosting an overlong wedding-cake competition.)
Today’s general editorial direction is another question. Even before Vieira’s joining, the show has drifted more toward titillating news, and this morning it delivered a Very Important first-hour interview with a hot teacher who slept with her 14-year-old student. (Mercifully for the rookie, Lauer got to do that segment.)
It’s also unclear whether Today will shake out as the Matt and Meredith show or the Meredith and Matt show. Lauer seems to have gotten used to the alpha slot since Katie’s departure, but Vieira is a hard woman to keep in the second-banana position, and this morning there seemed to be a kind of unsteady equilibrium between them.
This cannot hold. Whose Today show will it end up being? We’ll see but Matt should be careful. Those legs may be pretty, but they could still kick you and your rock-hard abs out of the spotlight.