What the Heck Happened to the Today Show?

OK - I'm admitting this. I am a PR person and I still sometimes watch the Today Show. I like to see what they are covering and what they consider important. But there's so little there.

Today I turned off Jenna Bush's pregnancy. She announced it on the air (I was still trying to figure out who she was) but when they called up George and Laura it became pretty clear that she was their daughter. The one who didn't get into trouble - the one who got married - became a teacher like her mom - and can't wait to have her baby. Really?

I turned it off while Jenna was still glowing and someone brought her flowers. I give her credit she cracked a joke at what they looked like in all their white roseness. But I cannot even remember what it was.

The Today Show was once a good program - what has happened to it? I can't watch it for more than 10-15 minutes without becoming profoundly annoyed and bored. That's not a good sign. So I watched a bit of the advertising and called a Hallmark ad in the first five seconds of it. Schmaltz as my grandmother would say.

Chasing the news of the moment, perhaps is the downfall. The fiscal cliff - enough already. And that's the most educated thing they talk about explaining it in terms an eight year-old could grasp. 

Every day there is another insipid story that is about people and is supposed to be inspiring. I sit here trying to remember one and I can't. It's too blurred with all the other nonsense on television.

Often I just feel horribly sorry for Matt Lauer. Still hanging in there while his co-hosts get even younger, and the pretense of journalism is no longer even that. 

OK let me just say it then - I am not a mindless idiot - please stop treating me like one. I know that network television has become one long reality television program but at least give me something other than canned celebrity interviews, silly stories and news dumbed down. I am an intelligent person, and you've lost me.

The only other thing I've noticed is that the lines outside the studio are very small compared to most years. I guess it's because of Sandy and the lack of tourists. Or maybe it's just that the fan base doesn't really care anymore. Either way whatever happened to The Today Show?