Before Savannah Guthrie returns to “Today,” she’s going to be the subject of one of the show’s biggest stories.
Guthrie will take part in a two-part interview with Hoda Kotb during which she is expected to describe the ordeal she and her family have been through following the abduction of her mother, Nancy. The interview, which has been taped, will be shown on Thursday, March 26 and Friday, March 27, on NBC’s “Today,” and a short clip was shown Wednesday. In it, a visibly emotional Guthrie tells Kotb of the strain she and her family have been under since her mother’s disappearance. “I wake up every night and imagine her terror,” Guthrie tells her colleague.
NBC has yet to announce a date for Guthrie to return to her co-anchoring duties on the program, but one is likely to be unveiled in coming days, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The interview will give viewers a chance to hear directly from Guthrie, who has been absent from the program since her mom vanished from her home in Arizona on January 31. Such a debrief will help to blunt some of the emotion almost certain to surround her return to formal duties on the show.
“We are in agony. We are in agony. It is unbearable,” Guthrie told Kotb, adding: “She needs to come home now.”
NBC has used similar tactics in the past. In 2015, when Brian Williams was removed from anchoring “NBC Nightly News” following a furor over embellishments he made about a 2003 reporting trip to Iraq, he took part in a long interview with then-“Today” co-host Matt Lauer, and the exchange was shown on both “Today” and “NBC Nightly News.” The interview was seen as a way to put Williams back in front of audiences after a period of outsized scrutiny.
Choosing Kotb to conduct the interview sets a personality familiar to audiences as the guide of what is likely to be a delicate exchange. Guthrie and her family have endured a terrible tragedy under intense public review. Kotb, a former “Today” co-anchor who remains under contract to NBC News, is an insider who is familiar with Guthrie and the morning-show audience, and yet also has some degree of removal from the proceedings. She is, after all, no longer a full-time staffer at the A.M. franchise.
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One of the challenges NBC News and “Today” staffers face is that Nancy Guthrie’s fate remains unknown. She has been missing for nearly two months and the case remains open. A new twist could result in Savannah Guthrie having to take more time away from the program, which has relied on her co-host, Craig Melvin, and Kotb in her absence, along with fill-ins by other “Today” anchors, including Sheinelle Jones and Laura Jarrett.
The situation NBC News faces is without recent parallel. Guthrie helps lead of a program that continues to deliver millions of dollars in advertising revenue and serves as the financial linchpin of a network news division– even in the age of streaming. Indeed, the four weekday hours of “Today” nabbed around $315.4 million in 2025, according to Guideline, a tracker of ad spending.
Viewership for “Today” has surged since Nancy Guthrie’s abduction. Quarter to date as of March 22, “Today” won an average audience of 3.1 million, according to date from Nielsen, up 14% from the year-earlier period. In contrast, ABC’s “Good Morning America” has commanded an average of nearly 2.93 million, while CBS’ “CBS Mornings” has lured an average of nearly 1.76 million. “Today” is seen by about 40% of viewers who watch one of the three broadcast-network morning programs, according to Nielsen data.
The show’s audience among people between 25 and 54 — the audience most coveted by advertisers in news programming — remains ahead of the same watching its two main rivals. Quarter to date as of March 22, “Today” commands an average of 630,000 viewers in the demo, compared with 497,000 for “GMA” and 269,000 for “CBS Mornings.” The “Today” total in the demo is down 6% from the year-earlier total, while “GMA’s” has increased by the same amount.
Guthrie enjoys significant goodwill among NBC executives and “Today” viewers. She is not a polarising personality and wins regular plaudits for her abilities to handle both hard-news interviews with politicians and softer features with athletes and celebrities. Even so, her return to the program she has co-anchored since July of 2012 is likely to be a poignant one, and will likely require a great deal of sympathy from those around her.
From Variety US