I cut to the chase. “So, whaddya think?”
Jeff paused for dramatic effect. Then somewhat cavalierly, he said, “Okay, I’ll do it.”
I was a little stunned. “Really?” I asked. “Really?” I repeated, surprised but so relieved to have someone I trusted to ride shotgun.
Jeff looked around as if to say, Am I missing something? Why isn’t she getting this? Alan chortled.
I probably should have been less grateful and more skeptical, interrogating Jeff’s true level of interest. I don’t think it even occurred to Alan to ask him a single question about this really consequential decision. Which I get; an agent’s raison d’être is to close the deal. But still—he was there to represent my interests, and I think he owed it to me to at least kick the tires on this thing.
Then there was the question of Jeff’s baggage. He and Les Moonves detested each other, so doing the show at CBS was a nonstarter （especially with Fager showing zero interest in using me on 60 Minutes）。 NBC had pitched me hard with a video of my antics on the TODAY show that ended with an invitation to “come home to NBC.” That tugged at my heartstrings—although with Jeff in the mix now, the invitation was basically rescinded. Suddenly, ABC was looking pretty good.
ABC honchos Anne Sweeney and Ben Sherwood arrived at my apartment bearing a PowerPoint presentation and a Wheaties box emblazoned with my high-school-cheerleader picture.
Ben talked about having an unparalleled stable of great talent that I would be part of. A former producer for Tom Brokaw, he said all the right things—about the high-profile specials I’d be doing, about me being part of the ABC family. I felt like he saw the possibilities.
Then Anne and Ben showed us the money: a whopping $50 million budget （more than twice what a show like this typically costs）， including a back-end percentage and a salary of $20 million for me, $10 million of which would go to Jeff—an unprecedented payday for an executive producer. It was crazy in retrospect, but at the time, it was important to me to show Jeff we’d be equal partners in this venture.
I FELT LIKE THINGS were starting to gel, so imagine my surprise when I was puttering around at home one day and a call came in with the familiar 664 prefix—NBC on the line.
“Hey, Katie, it’s Matt. I’m on the phone here with Jim.” Matt as in Lauer; Jim as in Bell, the EP of TODAY. I really wasn’t accustomed to getting personal calls from either one of these guys, much less on a party line.
“Hey, Katie,” Jim chimed in.
“Hey, guys! What’s up?”
“Well…we were wondering if you might be interested in coming back to the TODAY show.”
Really?
Here I was, trying to reinvent myself, when a sure thing reared its handsome head—an opportunity to go back to doing what I’d proved I was really good at with none other than Matt Lauer by my side. Meredith Vieira had announced she’d be leaving, and Ann Curry would be replacing her. So how would this work? I’d been raised on the notion that there were two main anchors overseeing the action, long before there was a cast of thousands sitting around a table “laughing and scratching,” as my mom would say.
“What about Ann?” I asked.
“We’ll work it out,” Jim said. If the plan was to sideline Ann, it wasn’t clear; I just assumed they were envisioning a throuple, which sounded awkward.
I wondered how the interviews would be divvied up. Matt and I had already been competitive about who got what; with three of us, I envisioned the TODAY “family” turning completely dysfunctional, fighting over a drumstick on Thanksgiving. And I was pretty sure Ann wouldn’t go for it either—honestly, it seemed a little unfair to her. But there was a looming chemistry issue: such a big part of that show is being able to hit the ball back and forth, and Matt and Ann just didn’t have that kind of rapport.
It all seemed a bit half-baked, a little desperate, and tricky from a PR standpoint. Besides, I was already into it with Jeff—it would have been a huge slap in the face if I backed out of our deal to retreat to NBC, where he was persona non grata. Ultimately, I decided Thomas Wolfe was right: I couldn’t go home again.
Back at CBS, I felt like a dead woman walking. For any doubters, there was this: On May 1st, when the most dramatic story of the Obama administration was breaking—SEAL Team 6 raiding the compound in Pakistan that was sheltering Osama bin Laden and taking him out—I wasn’t called in to report it.
Here I was, the face of the CBS Evening News, and on this night of all nights for newshounds （and Americans and freedom lovers） everywhere, hanging out at home in my sweatpants. I even called in to CBS—“Hey, this is incredible, what’s going on? Need me to come in?”