Vieira settles in 'Today' for a long haul

At 6:30 a.m. on Sept. 13, Today's Matt Lauer knocked on Meredith Vieira's dressing room door. He had advice for his new partner.

"He said, 'Just remember, this is not a sprint, it is a marathon. Don't worry about the show today being the end all and be all. This is for the long haul," Vieira recalled Friday.

It was probably good advice: On that day, after all the hoopla about Vieira's arrival, Today attracted 6.9 million viewers, compared with ABC's Good Morning America's 4.4 million, a 2.5-million-viewer margin. But the most recent weekly ratings show the gap between the two shows narrowing to just 840,000 viewers, a sign that viewers may not have cemented their morning show favorites just yet.

Rival producers say that they have no plans to lie down and that top-rated Today is vulnerable in the post-Couric era.

In morning TV, it's all about "how you wear over the long haul," says Early Show chief Steve Friedman, himself a former Today producer. "I think the fair assessment (of Vieira) is not next week or next month but where we are next year."

Today "as usual found a great new co-anchor, but things are changing on the landscape," says GMA boss Jim Murphy. "You see movements day to day in the numbers, and they have a very large lead, but there are days when we fight to a much closer decision."

Today producer Jim Bell says that it is nothing short of amazing for a morning show transition to go as smoothly as this one went.

"Let's not forget who Meredith replaced (referring to Katie Couric, who drove Today's decade-long winning streak) and the expectations that our rivals had: This was going to be their great 'moment of opportunity,' and yet the conversation is still about the margin" between the two shows.

"There's still an opportunity here," counters Murphy, who notes that GMA anchor Diane Sawyer, who talked exclusively last week to Robin Williams about his alcohol relapse and this week to Mel Gibson about his battle with booze, is continuing to work "on some very big interviews."

For her part, Vieira says she quickly settled into her new routine, getting up weekdays at 3 a.m.

"I love having the house to myself," says Vieira, a mother of three teens, Benjamin, Gabriel and Lily. "I love hanging out in the kitchen, having a cup of coffee. I feed the animals. I thought that would be much harder to adjust to."

The fast pace of Today has surprised her. She likens it to jumping "on a locomotive and it doesn't stop for two hours and then you're thrown off it. I keeping looking at my watch and saying, 'Which half hour are we in?' "

Weatherman Al Roker says Vieira "likes to play, and part of my stock in trade is shtick, so when somebody can match you step for step for the shtick, you say, 'All right, girlfriend!'

Vieira says that returning to reporting has been easy: "like the old horse putting the feedbag back on."

After nine years of chitchat on ABC's The View, "I was probably most afraid of getting back into the serious news." But about "a minute" into interviewing first lady Laura Bush face-to-face on the Today set Sept. 18, "I thought, 'Wait a minute. I can do this. What was I so worried about?'"

Says Lauer: "She is so smart and curious that when she gets her teeth into someone like the first lady or like Bill Clinton, it's fun to just kind of sit back and watch her. I think people who are watching the show may think she's better at that than some of the other stuff."

Vieira flew to Bailey, Colo., last week to talk with John Michael and Ellen Keyes, parents of Emily Keyes, 16, who was killed during a school shooting there Sept. 27.

While there, Vieira turned to her producer and said, "'You know, I have missed this.' You forget what a privilege it is to be a reporter, to give a voice to people who want it." The Keyes set up a foundation in memory of their daughter.

Last week, Vieira began writing a blog from NBC-owned ivillage .com. Bulletin: She's scared of flying (wine helps), and she cries at weddings, like the one on Friday's Today (meredithtoday.ivillage.com/entertainment).

"There are a lot of things I might like to say on a personal level on the blog that I can't on Today because of time or it might not be appropriate," Vieira says. "So it helps me wind down and get some thoughts out that I wish I could have otherwise and let people see other sides of my personality."

Vieira says that her kids and husband Richard Cohen all watched the first week. But now, only Lily has hung in, along with the family dog "because he likes her. No one else seems to care, which suggests to me that they're healthy."

E-mail pjohnson@usatoday.com

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