Nineteen days. That is how long Nancy Guthrie has been missing from her Arizona home, and how long her daughter Savannah has been absent from theTodayshow anchor desk she has occupied since 2012. Now, television industry insiders are openly questioning whether she will ever return.
It is a brutally frank assessment, and one that cuts against the carefully projected corporate solidarity NBC has maintained since the 84-year-old matriarch vanished. Behind closed doors, a different conversation is taking place. Executives are gaming out scenarios for what could become the most significant personnel upheaval in morning television since Matt Lauer's spectacular downfall in 2017. The stakes, both financial and reputational, are immense.
The numbers tell their own story. Today's four weekday hours pulled in roughly $315.4 million (£255 million) in advertising last year, perVariety, citing tracking firm Guideline. That revenue stream makes the programme the financial engine of NBC News. Losing its most recognisable face would hurt.
And yet the network finds itself trapped. Bringing in a permanent replacement while Guthrie's mother remains missing would look callous. Treating her poorly during a family nightmare would spark a public relations disaster. So for now, they wait.
Hoda Kotb, who left the programme in January 2025 after 26 years at NBC, has returned to her old chair alongside Craig Melvin.Page Sixreports she will remain for at least another week, though sources describe the arrangement as strictly week-to-week. One executive told The Daily Beast that Kotb's return amounted to a temporary fix rather than a real solution, noting that her original departure had been driven by a pay dispute with the network.
A post shared by Savannah Guthrie (@savannahguthrie)
Nancy Guthrie was last seen around 9.45 p.m. on 31 January, when she was dropped off at her Catalina Foothills home after dinner with her daughter, Annie. When she failed to appear for a virtual church service the following morning, herfamily raised the alarm. What investigators found at the property suggested she had been taken against her will, saidNBC News.
The FBI has since released doorbell camera footage showing an armed, masked man outside the residence on the morning of her disappearance. They describe him as between 5ft 9in and 5ft 10in, carrying a distinctive black 25-litre Ozark Trail backpack traced to Walmart. A glove recovered two miles from the home did not match any samples in the national CODIS database. Tips have poured in, more than 20,000 at last count. The combined reward now stands at $200,000 (£161,000),Fox 10 Phoenixrevealed.
None of it has produced a breakthrough.
Savannah, 54, has posted a series of emotional video appeals to her mother's captors. In her most recent message on 15 February, her voice steady but strained, she urged whoever is responsible to come forward, saying it was never too late to do the right thing and expressing her continued faith in people's fundamental goodness.
Source: International Business Times UK
