NBC’s Today Show is finally competitive again, and the network has Hoda Kotb to thank for that.

Matt Lauer out, Hoda Kotb in

On November 29, 2017, Hoda Kotb began sitting in for Matt Later after myriad sexual harassment allegations got Lauer fired from NBC.

When Kotb started co-hosting NBC’s morning show with Savannah Guthrie, the Today Show began doing better in the ratings. According to The New York Times, the Today Show “averaged 4.6 million viewers. Those ratings were “good enough to beat Good Morning America for the third Lauer-less week in a row.”

“I believe it was shocking for the studio execs to see that not only did ratings not fall, but they increased with Hoda on board,” says BJ Dowlen, owner of Bodyworks Enterprises LLC.

At first, people thought the initial ratings spike was because people were tuning in to see how Kotb and Guthrie handled the Lauer news. However, viewers stuck around. In fact, Kotb was so well received that just this week, she was officially named Guthrie’s co-anchor.

Making history and bucking tradition

Kotb’s appointment makes her and Guthrie’s pairing historical. Because for the first time since its incarnation, Today is led by female co-hosts, reports The Washington Post.

It’s also notable that Kotb and Guthrie’s relationship on air is quite refreshing.

In the past, NBC News has strived to make their on-air personalities seem like family—that is, one with a traditional “mother” and “father” at the helm.

“Back when I was at GMA, Joan Lunden and Barbara Walters occasionally co-hosted, but it was always when David Hartman or Charlie Gibson were away,” says John Goodman, owner of John Goodman Public Relations and Media Placement.

“The choice of Hoda also sends a strong signal that you don’t have to be a 20 or 30-something woman to rise to the top in morning TV.”

“They have an undeniable connection with each other and most importantly, with viewers, a hallmark of Today,” adds NBC News chairman Andy Lack.

Also, Kotb has the chops for her new position. She started as a broadcast journalist in Fort Myers and New Orleans, and joined NBC News as a Dateline correspondent in 1998. And in 2008, she started co-hosting the 10 a.m. hour of the Today Show with Kathie Lee Gifford.

There’s still work to be done

Although Kotb is now co-anchor of the Today Show and has Lauer’s former position, she is not going to make the money he made.

“Page Six is reporting that Kotb has landed a $7 million per year deal, which matches Savannah Guthrie’s,” reports TVNewser. “News media analyst Andrew Tyndall reports her salary is closer to $5 million. Whatever it is, it’s nowhere close to the $20-25 million annual salary Lauer was reportedly making at NBC News.”

Considering Kotb’s history, this seems quite unfair. We can only hope that both Guthrie and Kotb will receive a considerable pay bump in the coming year.

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Why the first show canceled for the fall TV season deserved to die.

Last week, much like salmon leap forward in a river, the first shows of the fall TV season struggled for life upstream. Meanwhile, studio executives wearing the skins of endangered grizzly bears swiped at them from rocks in the water, gnawing at the flesh of bad jokes and ill-timed dramatic pauses. The first TV show of the season to get its tail chewed off? That would be NBC’s “The Playboy Club.”

NBC swiftly canned its knock-off to AMC’s critically-acclaimed wunderkind “Mad Men” after it proved to be a big ratings disappointment. It was also condemned by the Parents Television Council for its “racy” content. “The Playboy Club” tried to bring back the early 1960s, when Playboy bunnies were pre-silicone and hair pieces, and men could still be men. (Whatever that means. Because “The Playboy Club” never managed to explain it.) The end result? We’re happy to show it the door.

Hugh Hefner himself introduced us to the era, telling us his club was “a place where anything could happen to anybody. Or any bunny.” But the Playboy bunny costume was about as interesting as any of the characters got. Its heroes and heroines were merely one-dimensional cardboard cut-outs of era stereotypes. Club man Nick Dalton (Eddie Cibrian) stalked about the club doing his best Don Draper impersonation, mostly as a prop to a cadre of unrealistic female characters. The ingénue, the threatened older women, and the cynic all splashed together onscreen poorly. You half-expected Hugh Hefner himself to walk on screen with a soapy sponge to clean up the tropes spiraling out all over the club floor.

Hugh Hefner defended this debacle, telling Entertainment Weekly that his show was better suited for cable. “I’m sorry NBC’s The Playboy Club didn’t find its audience,” he wrote to Entertainment Weekly. “It should have been on cable, aimed at a more adult audience.” Fair enough.  Trying to write edgy material for a network show is like trying to ask your doctor if you can drink alcohol with your prescriptions. You’re supposed to be serving up sugary, family-friendly fare that viewers 18-49 are going to drag themselves off of Hulu to watch.

But “The Playboy Club” wasn’t too edgy for primetime; it was too silly. It dumbed down sexism like it was an iconic institution we were supposed to miss. There’s no need for artfully-woven characters and subtle story-telling when there are push-up bras and satin corsets. Its writing and plotting was on-the-nose obvious from opening scene to end. AMC’s “Mad Men” succeeds brilliantly with women in similarly subservient roles because you understand where everyone is coming from, even if it’s in a place we’re glad no longer overtly exists. “The Playboy Club” just expected us to reminisce as if we were nostalgic for limited choices.

And this is why we’re glad to see it go. We understand retro-sexism when it dives deeper below the surface. When it looks at the underlying forces at work in the early 1960s that later birthed the feminist movement. Instead, NBC’s venture made us feel like we were literally thumbing through a Playboy magazine. It’s nice to see all the pretty costumes or lack thereof, but what’s the point when it’s all just a surface fantasy? The Playboy Empire has never been about portraying a realistic representation of femininity, but rather an image of gleeful subservience tucked into a costume. In the end, we just felt like we had witnessed something we’d rather forget – or at the least, move past.

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What are the odds of winning a green house courtesy of HGTV? And we love us some green programming, but has NBC’s big brother-ish eco-placement gone too far? We’ll answer these burning questions in this week’s installment of I Want My Green TV.

To Dream the Impossible Green Home Dream

HGTV’s Green Home Giveaway premiered Sunday night. For the next 45 days you can enter to win a brand new eco-friendly house, a GMC Terrain and $100,000 (a smart move by HGTV to help pay all the taxes!)

There’s no way to predict how many viewers will enter, but if you hope to be victorious, you might as well play the lottery while holding a lightning rod and waiting for the strike. The odds are about the same.

Still if you dare to dream, here’s what you need to know. The cozy cottage is in historic Plymouth, Massachusetts. It’s built with wood produced from sustainable forests, landscaped with native plants, and decorated with recycled furniture and local art. Plus, the rooftop solar panels feed excess power back to the grid.

Of course, the fact that the cottage is just 2,100 square feet, also plays into its low carbon foot print. The Energy Star rating of the home shows that it uses 41 percent less energy and 50 percent less water than a typical home of its size.

But if you aren’t the winner, don’t despair. There are a few Green Home features you can incorporate into your own house:

• A Serta mattress made from recycled steel and soy-infused foam that reduces CO2 emissions, but more importantly makes for a dreamy night sleep
• An induction cook top that heats only when the pan is physically on the burner
• A solar tube for your master suite’s closet that redirects sunlight to reduce the need for artificial lighting

NBC Goes Green with “Behavior Placement”

We’re all for positive reinforcement of eco-friendly issues on TV shows, but frankly, we’re still creeped out by the fact that NBC has been slipping environmental messages into its shows, and hoping viewers will follow suit. Last week when EcoSalon’s Christopher Correa discussed this subliminal advertising technique we couldn’t help but think about the upside to all of this. NBC is making sure that their shows push environmental issues, with the hope that big businesses will attach themselves to environmentally savvy series. No complaining here.

Remember Al Gore on 30 Rock last year? Yup, that was “behavior placement” in action. The movement kicked off again this week, as it does each April and November.

Tune in next time to see what’s cropping up on green TV.

Image: HGTV

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From the Hill”¦

It’s almost Earth Day – do you know where your congressman is? Chances are, he or she is greening the office. Maryland Representative “Dutch” Ruppersberger announced plans to increase energy efficiency, save resources and cut costs in his Washington, DC., office. He’s participating in the “My Green Office” program, which was initiated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a year ago this month.

Congressman Ruppersberger and his staff are implementing new practices and technology to reduce energy consumption and operational costs, including:

• Installing new smart power strips that automatically turn off when computers are not in use
• Replacing traditional light bulbs with energy-efficient ones
• Eliminating the use of bottled water with a new water filtration system
• Switching to reusable coffee mugs and glasses
• Ordering solar shades and composting bins

“These changes may seem simple and insignificant, but if every House Office participates, we can save nearly $1 million and keep up to 3,000 pounds of garbage from filling up landfills every year,” said Congressman Ruppersberger.

He purports that participation in the program over the course of a year will reduce electricity consumption at the House of Representatives by more then 7,500 kWH, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 16,000 pounds and result in savings of more than $1,300 from reduced electricity and procurement costs.

Thus far the program has trained roughly 3,000 House staffers in ways to eliminate material, electric and pollutant waste in their respective offices, and expects to reach all 7,000 DC Metro area House employees by the end of this year.

Since Pelosi launched the My Green Office program on Earth Day 2009, her office reports that the House has saved 1 million sheets of paper each month and 175,000 kilowatt hours of electricity, diverted 75,000 pounds of waste from landfills and cut nearly 400,000 pounds of carbon emissions.

For those of us keeping score, Congress has yet to significantly improve environmental policies by passing comprehensive legislation beyond that of the first of its kind in 1970 (the year Earth Day was founded by Senator Gaylord Nelson). Radical Republican Howard Baker perhaps drafted the most passionate provision in the Clean Air Act, the “technology forcing” section that required all new cars to have catalytic converters, even though no such device was yet commercially available.

In recent years, the green movement (in politics) has sought to find softer language and more nonpartisan positions that would help raise support in diverse communities, including those with little or no interest in environmental values. Meanwhile, each draft of the climate bill becomes less aggressive than its predecessor. Those energy-efficient office light bulbs and reusable coffee mugs will come in useful when drafting yet another bland iteration.

From the Street”¦

Is NBC giving the word programming a bad name? That’s the sentiment bandying about the blogs this week. It appears that television shows on the peacock network have been trying out a new subliminal messaging stratagem: behavioral placement. Product placement is so American Idol after all. But the results have been mixed. People have proven to be surprisingly offended by it. (Like this network needed another kerfuffle after Conangate.)

Instead of shilling for brand-name beverages and designer doughnuts, NBC executives have been running demonstrations of eco-savvy living during popular sitcoms and dramas.

All programming this month is themed around – or directly influenced by – the aforementioned Earth Day. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal exposed the Green Initiative (aka General Electric’s insidious mind tricks), which the network didn’t deny: If “Tina Fey is tossing a plastic bottle into the recycling bin,” the theory goes, audience members will be conditioned to do the same.

Christopher Rosen in Movieline calls the practice “creepy” and “dumb,” and states that “the pressure to be eco-conscious has reached a new high”¦NBC implies that people are too “˜patently stupid’ to make healthy decisions on their own”¦do viewers really need NBC “telling them how to run their life?”

To Rosen and his fellow critics, I query: This is what’s gotten you riled up? Television execs have always treated tube viewers like boobs. Witness laugh tracks, ad campaigns labeled “Must See TV” and shows like Friends that depict characters obsessed with items from Pottery Barn and Tiffany & Co. to compel viewers to obsess over them as well. Now that’s pushy.

But having Tina Fey’s character Liz Lemon toss empty plastic bottles into the recycling bin? Casting Al Gore to send-up his own gung-ho environmentalist image (while at the same time encouraging viewers to embrace his latter-day eco-awareness)? Fine by me. The earth is a nobler beneficiary than junk food brands and soft drink makers. And an episode of The Office featuring a cast member dressed as a made-up superhero named Recyclops didn’t tarnish the show’s quality in the least. The Office has seen a sharp drop in quality, all right, but that has nothing to do with socially conscious tinkering.

Does NBC’s Green Initiative seem intrusive, even Orwellian? This progressive stereotyping segments “viewers”¦into categories based on their favorite shows and their level of concern about the environment,” says Rosen. Sounds like Nielsen ratings and social responsibility gone right to me.

Television provides a service. If it aims to provide some useful eco tips while it works to entertain, it’s on par with going to the supermarket and being offered a cash incentive if you bring your own grocery bag. Unless there really is a greedy marketplace for designer compost heaps in need of a celebrity push from the cast of 30 Rock.

Editor’s Note: This is the first installment in Christopher Correa’s weekly column, Hill/Street Greens, examining the environmental deeds (and misdeeds) of Washington, D.C. and Wall Street.

Images: Speaker Pelosi and image courtesy of NBC.com

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