Trouble Already! Matt Lauer & New Today Show Boss Have Tense Relationship
Nov. 13 2012, Published 7:00 a.m. ET
By Jen Heger - Breaking Celebrity News Assistant Managing Editor
Trouble is brewing already on the TODAY show in the immediate aftermath of the show dumping its executive producer while struggling with ratings, Breaking Celebrity News has learned exclusively.
Matt Lauer, and his new boss, executive producer Alexandra Wallace, have had a very tense relationship and Lauer disagrees on the direction Wallace will be taking with the embattled morning show, a source close to the situation told Breaking Celebrity News exclusively.
What's more, Wallace has a very close relationship with former co-anchor, Ann Curry, whose relationship with Lauer is frosty at best. Curry's departure triggered TODAY's ratings crash and enabled ABC's Good Morning America to knock TODAY out of the No. 1 spot it held for years.
"Matt Lauer is NOT happy that Jim Bell who had been the executive producer of the TODAY show since 2005 has been forced out," the source told Breaking Celebrity News. "Alexandra Wallace, who will be Bell's replacement, and Matt have never had a good working relationship. Matt doesn't like the fact that Alexandra is a big advocate of Ann Curry's.
"Alexandra is going to be shaking things up on the show in order to get it back on top. For instance, against Matt and Jim Bell's long-time stance of only having NBC-paid experts to comment on current events in the news, which has made the show feel very, very stale, Alexandra plans on using non-NBC staffers to do that. The reason is that having different experts will give the audience a much more diverse and knowledgeable base of information they can use in their own lives that isn't the same predictable information being dispersed.
"Matt hates the idea and likes the continuity of using NBC talent such as Star Jones, Dr. Gail Saltz and Do