Tamron Hall has sent a message to The Today Show.
And the message basically goes like this:
See ya! Wouldn’t want to be ya!
The long-time anchor of the third hour of Today, Hall left her post today, about a week after news spread that she would lose her gig to NBC’s latest big hire, Megyn Kelly.
“The last 10 years have been beyond anything I could have imagined, and I’m grateful. I’m also very excited about the next chapter,” Hall said via statement, adding:
“To all my great colleagues, I will miss you and I will be rooting for you.”
In news that broke last week, sources confirmed that Kelly – who left Fox News for NBC at the outset of 2017 – will host her own five-days-a-week program at either 9am EST or 10am EST on NBC.
If she ends up in the earlier timeslot, then Kelly will bridge the gap between the first two hours of Today and the fourth hour, which has been hosted by a buzzed Hoda Kotb ad Kathie Lee Gifford for years.
If Kelly ends up in the later timeslot, then Kotb and Gifford will move to 9am themselves.
Either way, Hall and Al Roker will be the odd employees out.
They will no longer head up their own 60 minutes of the popular morning series, despite being the top-rated program on broadcast television every week for the last seven weeks in their timeslot.
Hall is clearly peeved about this development.
“Yesterday was her last day as an anchor on both networks,” the network said of Hall, referring to NBC and MSNBC.
“Tamron is an exceptional journalist, we valued and enjoyed her work at Today and MSNBC and hoped that she would decide to stay.
“We are disappointed that she has chosen to leave, but we wish her all the best.”
Just how angry was Hall over being bumped due to Kelly’s arrival?
“She was offered a lot of money to stay … a new multi-year, multi-million dollar deal to stay at the Today show and MSNBC and she turned it down,” a source tells People Magazine.
Moreover, this same source says Hall doesn’t even have a landing spot at the moment.
Her contract with NBC was up, but she hasn’t been offered any deals by any competing networks. At least not yet.
She simply wanted out.
Aside from the actual demotion, Hall is allegedly mad at the way she found out about NBC’s scheduling plans.
On Friday, this People insider claims, Hall was informed that she and Roker were losing their gigs mere minutes before she was set to go on the MSNBC air.
“In Tamron Hall style, she went on air and acted like the classy professional that she is,” the source says, although it’s clear she wasn’t happy with how everything played out.
“She couldn’t believe they told her right before she had to go on air. She was definitely shocked.”
Roker will still appear regularly during other hours of The Today Show.
We’re guessing he isn’t pleased with this maneuvering by the network, either, but he’s practically an American icon at this point. He’ll be fine.
Let’s hope Hall lands on her feet somewhere and proves to be more than fine in the near future as well.