Ever since Matt Lauer was fired from the Today, ratings for the morning news series has risen dramatically, prompting speculation that a Lauer-less Today show is what women viewers may have wanted all along.
Refinery29 spoke with female fans of Today and discovered that an overwhelmingly amount of viewers didn’t enjoy Lauer’s presence all that much.
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Liesel Burks, a 26-year-old attorney, said, “Frankly, I’m not surprised at all that the TODAY Show ratings have improved, because I always thought [Lauer] was the weakest host. TODAY Show‘s greatest strength has been the high-caliber female journalists that the show has promoted over the years, and I wish they had been able to shine more.”
“Even from the beginning I always thought that Katie Couric and Ann Curry were the two strongest anchors on the show. I found Matt to be abrasive, especially during interviews, and I hated that he often interrupted women on the show,” Burks later added.
The outlet also talked to 52-year-old non-profit organization executive secretary, and Dayton, Ohio resident, Barb Clark, who said, “I just felt he was always disingenuous and a bit smarmy. A specific example that I can think of was the Trump/Clinton debate.”
“He was much tougher on Clinton than Trump. Overall, he didn’t seem to really press male interviewees when he should have, but didn’t seem to have a problem doing that with female interviewees,” she concluded.
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