The tearful final episode of NBC`s ”Family Ties” was no less sentimental than the opening of Friday`s ”Today” show, in which-after weeks of rumor and speculation-it finally became official that Jane Pauley will be leaving the show and that Deborah Norville will take her place as Bryant Gumbel`s co-host.
Gumbel called Pauley ”my buddy,” Pauley gave her alarm clock to Norville and Norville gave Pauley a New York restaurant guide, useful to one who no longer will have to get out of bed before dawn.
”Waking up is going to be the easy part,” said Norville, a former anchor at WMAQ-Ch. 5, who came to ”Today” from ”NBC News at Sunrise,”
”but the hard part is going to be following in your footsteps, `cause they are awfully big shoes to fill.”
Pauley, a 13-year veteran of ”Today,” will leave the program sometime after the end of the year, but she will remain at NBC where she will develop a weekly prime-time news magazine and do special reports for the ”NBC Nightly News With Tom Brokaw,” at least through 1992.
For all the mutual admiration that marked Friday`s show, the atmosphere surrounding ”Today” has been less sanguine in weeks past.
When Pauley reopened negotiations on her contract, NBC clamped a news blackout on the talks, leading to a flurry of speculative press reports that she was being forced off the show, at Gumbel`s urging, by the younger Norville. Pauley denied that, saying the decision to leave the show was based strictly on her desire to try something new.
”The question I have most dreaded has been, `What are you going to do next?` ” Pauley said. ”The very idea of `next` was terrifying, and then one day I realized it wasn`t anymore. . . .
”What might be next? Persuading NBC that it was time for a crew change is the hardest thing I have ever done . . . but it has hurt to see two of my friends, Bryant and Deborah, assigned roles in this that they did not play,” Pauley said.
In his Friday morning confirmation of Pauley`s departure, Gumbel acknowledged the strain reports of strife on the show had put upon the principals.
Norville, who said she did not feel she had a right to break the silence that surrounded Pauley`s contract negotiations, was offended by all the speculative press coverage, some of which depicted her as a fiercely ambitious ”shark” out to supplant Pauley.
”I`d be less than honest if I didn`t say I was hurt, as a woman, as a professional and as a journalist,” she said, in an interview Friday afternoon.
”I thought that kind of sexism was dead-that two women could not share the masthead of a show or a newspaper or a law firm without fighting.
”There was never any rancor between Jane and me. . . . We`ve never been anything but friends. I`ve worked for 12 years to improve my skills as a reporter and as an interviewer and I`m hurt that all that was overlooked in the speculation.”
