How early news shows grapple with Trump, technology
Robin Roberts needs to rely on more than just her journalism training to survive on “Good Morning America.”
ABC News keeps throwing new program configurations at her, so much so that Roberts says she draws upon her childhood experience, when her father had to move from job to job in the Air Force, to keep rolling with them.
“I had to make new friends every three years,” she says. On camera at “GMA,” she’s done much the same.
When she joined the show as a co-anchor in 2005, Roberts worked with Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer, then just Sawyer. Then she teamed with George Stephanopoulos and a broader “family” of news anchors in a configuration that helped the show surpass its main rival, NBC’s “Today,” in the ratings for the first time in 16 years.
Now, “GMA” looks nothing like the program that snatched the viewership crown (it’s still TV’s most-watched morning program, though NBC has taken back the lead among key viewers). In 2020, Roberts is part of a trio — she opens the show with Stephanopoulos and Michael Strahan — and the second hour of “GMA” takes place before a live audience seated in a separate studio.
In a different era, producers would try to maintain elements of the show for as long as possible to avoid upsetting longtime viewers. David Hartman launched “GMA” in 1975 and kept on as host into 1987.
“There were very little, if any, format changes,” he recalls.
Sticking to last year’s formula is no longer a strategy for the future. TV’s business of dawn is breaking. Whether or not it can be fixed remains to be seen.
In recent years, the morning slot has experienced tremendous upheaval. Consider the dismissals of Matt Lauer from “Today” and Charlie Rose from “CBS This Morning,” or ABC’s quick-turn move of Strahan to “GMA” from “Live” with Kelly Ripa.
President Donald Trump’s attraction to “Fox & Friends” can create ripples in the news cycle; his feud with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” shocked the anchors as well as their audience.
Once a softer environment for news and interviews, morning television has become the most intense and competitive time of day for major TV news outlets, even though viewers are getting more news from smartphone screens and other new-tech venues. And as the pace of breaking news increases, the shows are turning more hard-boiled.
In recent years, viewers have seen anchors conduct contentious newsmaker interviews, discuss shocking political maneuvers and even cover detailed sexual assault allegations against former colleagues.
Adding to the tension: Key viewers have defected from the a.m. offerings on ABC, NBC and CBS. Over a five-season period that ended with the 2018-19 cycle, the audience that news advertisers pay for most — people between 25 and 54 — fell almost 22% at “CBS This Morning,” 28% at “Today” and a little over 38% at “GMA,” according to Nielsen.
Meanwhile, cable’s best-known morning programs — “Fox & Friends,” “Morning Joe” and “New Day” — have won viewers by aggressively focusing on a narrower political spectrum and breaking national news.
“It’s not your momma’s ‘Good Morning America,’ ” says Roberts one morning during a quick break on set while the cameras are off. “Nor should it be.”
In sunrise visits to six of the nation’s most-watched a.m. programs, Variety found anchors taking on more roles as their networks extend into digital video and social media; producers working to beat their rivals in the traditional ratings, all the while hoping their networks monetize experimental ways of reaching viewers; and news personnel trying to figure out how to balance an increasing amount of hard news with the lighter tone that has been a hallmark of the time slot.
Michael Corn, senior executive broadcast producer for “GMA,” sees changes coming at breakneck speed.
“Our world as media consumers is evolving at an incredible pace,” he says. “If you’re running a show like this, you have to learn to evolve just as fast.”
America’s six most-watched morning programs — “GMA,” “Today,” “CBS This Morning,” “Fox & Friends” “Morning Joe” and “New Day” — bring in almost $1 billion in ad dollars and millions of viewers every year. At broadcast networks, the shows typically carry the entire news division. “Today” is “the beating heart, financially, spiritually and editorially,” of NBC News, says Noah Oppenheim, the division’s president. “Yeah, it’s critical.”
The programs once thrived by becoming part of a family habit, passed from one generation to the next. Now each member of a clan can check out Twitter headlines, smartphone notifications or even email newsletters.
Morning programs continue to hold the national interest.
Apple bet millions of dollars on “The Morning Show,” a streaming-video drama that offers a not-so-veiled look at the inner workings of morning TV, particularly “Today.” Roberts can’t take a day off without people wondering where she’s gone. At “Today,” Savannah Guthrie’s recent eye surgery — chronicled in great detail on various broadcasts in December and January — has sparked strong viewer reaction.
“It’s on the mend,” she says. “We have all lived through the eye saga. It’s getting better.”
The rule of morning news had long been to offer viewers the equivalent of a soothing cup of coffee. These days, the shows often serve up a shot of much harder stuff.
In the Trump era, that makes for moments that a different generation of morning audience might never have thought they’d see on TV.
During one recent broadcast of “Morning Joe,” for example, Scarborough told viewers that White House adviser Stephen Miller, whose controversial remarks in pre-election emails to the conservative news site Breitbart had leaked, was “revealed as a white nationalist or as a champion of white nationalism.” No matter what one’s politics, that’s tough stuff to hear over coffee and cereal or while the kids play next to the couch.
And yet viewers flock to these cable programs. Some pass along clips of the knock-down, dragouts between Trump supporters and the “New Day” anchors on CNN (the network has on occasion cut its commercials so the back-and-forth can continue without interruption). Others enjoy hearing MSNBC’s Scarborough and Brzezinski warn about behavior coming out of the White House. And some thrill to see members of the Trump administration showing up on “Fox & Friends.”
The anchors on those networks are fierce rivals, but on this point they agree: Audiences like what they see. While the shows draw fewer viewers than their broadcast rivals, ratings have been on the rise.
Between the 2014-15 and the 2018-19 TV seasons, the 25-to-54 audience has soared 25% for “Fox & Friends,” 28% for CNN’s “New Day” and a whopping 113% for MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“I always thought that it was a tender time of the day,” says Steve Doocy, who launched “Fox & Friends” in 1998 and has worked at other morning programs.
“You’re just waking up. You want it nice and easy. But what we have noticed is that when we do segments that are louder, at a hotter temperature — you know what? It kind of works.”
Indeed, those discussions are part of the cable shows’ appeal.
“I think people are tuning in to us to see people held to account,” says Alisyn Camerota of “New
Day.” “People do like it when we hold their feet to the fire.
“Sometimes we have to interrupt people if they are blathering on with their talking points, but even then, our viewers expect us to get in there and stop the nonsense. I don’t wrestle with it.”
The broadcast shows still boast celebrity interviews and cooking segments, but they’ve also changed with the times. “CBS This Morning” injected a newsier focus on the proceedings when it launched in 2012.
“Our competitors will say (to me) I really like what you guys are doing,” says Gayle King of “CBS This Morning.” “They shall remain nameless, but they are well known.”
In 2015, NBC eliminated the longtime news reader position on “Today” and pushed fluffier stories into the second hour. That let the anchors at 7 a.m. lean into a tighter focus on hard news, says Oppenheim. “GMA” recently reworked its starting moments with a “cold open” on Roberts, Stephanopoulos and Strahan at the desk, pushing the usual voiceovers and video montages until after the trio kicks off the show.
Now, even some of the cable hosts have begun to wring their hands over how tough a stance to take each day.
“Mika and I for the first time had to talk to each other before we went on the show and basically say, ‘Let’s keep it down to a simmer,’ ” says Scarborough. “We can’t say the world is coming to an end every day. We can’t predict that locusts are going to descend from the heavens every day and tear the flesh off everyone in Washington every day.”
He credits co-anchor Willie Geist for keeping discussions calmer and notes his team tries to use sports scores and other conversations about culture to cool things down.
The dizzying array of outlets now vying for morning attention puts pressure on all the shows to put up more content and throw something new at viewers at every turn.
Even the quieter moments in early-bird TV can be a squeeze.
The day has barely started, and Guthrie is already pushing up against a deadline. The clock ticks just past 6:30 a.m. at the show’s famous Studio 1A, in a tiny hairand-makeup room often used for production meetings as the anchors get ready to go on screen. Guthrie, Hoda Kotb, Al Roker and Craig Melvin are talking to producers about everything from the state of U.S.-Iran relations to a recipe that involves apples and pancetta — all elements of the coming broadcast — and Guthrie has to take a final look at the opening for the show: Due to overnight developments in the news cycle, changes are needed.
She and executive producer Libby Leist quickly start calling other “Today” operatives, including producers in the show’s control room. Leist tracks down NBC White House correspondent Kristen Welker, who is scheduled to have a one-on-one in-studio discussion with Guthrie. They need to work out new questions.
“Ten years ago, the show used to be put to bed in the afternoon the day before,” says Leist, “and now there are more conversations we have reinventing the show as it gets up to air.”
NBC is working to push “Today” forward after an era of tumult. The program has been under a microscope since 2012, when it lost in the ratings to “GMA” for the first time in 16 years. That same year, co-anchor Ann Curry left in a tearful on-air goodbye. Lauer’s ouster in 2017 brought new scrutiny to the news division and even parent Comcast.
“All the shows have their ups and downs, and I think the ‘Today’ show gets a lot of scrutiny,” says Guthrie. “I hope that’s because people think this show still matters.”
Executives believe the program has found stability with Guthrie and Kotb — and a business plan that calls for consideration of digital and social elements to be just as important as the TV programming. NBC’s vision of morning business may be one others pursue as well.
ABC News has also worked to turn “GMA” into an always-on digital presence. Both programs have begun to dabble in e-commerce, allowing viewers to buy some of the products they see showcased in certain segments.
“You can imagine a future in which the broadcast television show is just one piece of a larger ‘Today’ brand that people are interacting with,” says Oppenheim. Leist envisions being able to offer cooking demonstrations from the “Today” archives via Peacock, NBCUniversal’s new streaming-video service.
TV executives hold out hope for the future. Producers believe their shows will get new sampling on both old and new screens. Next fall, television ratings are going to include some of the viewership that watches screens in places other than the home, such as offices and hotel rooms. And sending morning segments into the streamingvideo ether is gaining traction.
Amid the frenzy, the anchors can’t forget why people continue to latch on to the morning show.
“The way people are receiving it is shifting, but I don’t think that changes the product,” says “CBS This Morning” co-anchor Tony Doukopil. “The product still has to make a connection with people.”
Scott Carlin, executive vice president of global media and entertainment at Magid, a TVindustry consultant, says that modern viewers see themselves as “survivors.” So, yes, they want to hear all the explosive news stories, but they still want to walk away feeling positive. That’s no easy task.
”I think it’s very challenging for all of these shows to figure out how do they not get caught in a fear trap?” Carlin says.