A television news 'magazine' consisting of about five minutes of Amerocentric 'news-ish' stories and about fifty-five minutes of commercial advertisement, blatantly or obliquely passed off as news for sister/affiliated companies and conscripted glitterati.
News anchors Matt and Meredith are given scripted content about what they may say from corporate. They are allowed to discuss anything trivial as if it were news. Actual 'news', both foreign and domestic, left NBC Today Show with the removal of Jane Pauley and Bryant Gumbel. Nobody has seen a real interview on the
morning 'news magazine' since that era.
It is believed that network executives were neutered or spayed by the executive branch of the US federal
government between the years of 2000 and 2008, causing network news programs like
NBC's Today Show to focus more on the then
popular federal prime mandate: 'Buy more
stuff.'
NBC's Today Show translated this into 'Buy more of our
stuff'.
It remains to be seen whether
NBC's Today Show will regrow a pair of gonads and actually start reporting news again.
Ann Curry is the only person believed not to have thoroughly compromised her own standards in the process.
NBC's Today Show looks more and more like the Home Shopping Network. The only difference is that most people who watch it can't afford $200 for a suit jacket, even if Meredith pretends to claim it's such a 'steal'. Most of us
don't generally wear more than $100 worth of cloths at a
time, if we're lucky and find NBC's Today Show tremendously out of touch.