NBC fires Lauer after accusations

“Today” show host Matt Lauer was fired for what NBC on Wednesday called “inappropriate sexual behaviour” with a colleague and was promptly confronted with a published report accusing him of crude and habitual misconduct with other women around the office.

With his easygoing charm, Lauer has long been a lucrative and highly visible part of NBC News and one of the highest-paid figures in the industry, and his downfall shook the network and stunned many of the roughly four million viewers who start their day with him.

He is easily one of the biggest names brought down in recent weeks by the wave of sexual misconduct allegations that have swept through Hollywood, the media and politics.

Network news chief Andrew Lack said in a memo to the staff that NBC received a complaint about Lauer’s behaviour on Monday and determined he violated company standards. NBC said the misconduct started when Lauer and a network employee were at the Sochi Olympics in 2014 and continued beyond that assignment.

Lack said it was the first complaint lodged against Lauer in his 20 years at NBC, but “we were also presented with reason to believe this may not have been an isolated incident.”

NBC News received two new complaints against Lauer on Wednesday, “NBC Nightly News” reported. The network didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Earlier Wednesday, it was left to Lauer’s shaken “Today” colleagues, Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb, to break the news to viewers at the top of the morning’s show.

Word of Lauer’s abrupt exit came on the day of NBC’s “Christmas in Rockefeller Center” special featuring the annual Manhattan treelighting ceremony. Lauer was to have co-hosted the Wednesday night program.