Too Competitive to Care

 From a New York Magazine piece on the decline and fall of NBC's Today Show comes an anecdote about the bad side of competition.

  Many attributed the decline to Ann Curry - some arguing that she wasn't right for a morning news host, and many others pointing to how NBC handled her firing after it became glaringly obvious that the chemistry between Curry and Matt Lauer was toxic - and that at least one of them had to go.  At that point, fears, contracts, reputations - and particularly the growing success of Good Morning America - made a mess of things. The article makes for some fascinating reading on the inner workings of a disaster in the making.

But for me, the central theme of the piece was the mounting paranoia as Good Morning America supplanted the Today Show as top of the morning show heap.  And this short anecdote captures its essence:

When Robin Roberts left Good Morning America a month later to get treatment for MDS, Curry asked NBC if she could tweet a note of sympathy for the ABC co-host. NBC said no, afraid she was trying to aid the enemy.

That just about sums it up.

Source -  Long Night at Today, New York Magazine