Ann Curry Ouster: Social Media Analysis Reveals Low Public Opinion

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In morning television, chemistry among the program's hosts is as important as landing big newsmaker interviewers. And Ann Curry's abbreviated tenure as Matt Lauer's co-host on Today can be chalked up to not enough of the former. Although Curry is an intrepid chronicler of global humanitarian crises and well-liked inside NBC News, results from one analytics company offers some insight into public and media perception of the morning news landscape and its personalities. 

Meredith Vieira, who preceded Curry as Today co-host, generated the best results on Twitter and other social media, according to data from social analytics company General Sentiment.

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While Vieira’s social sentiment trended downward from Dec. 9 2011 through May 9, 2012, social media mentions of Vieira were still nearly 76 percent positive compared to only 24 percent negative. 

Curry generated the lowest sentiment rating (53 percent positive compared to 47 percent negative) on social media and Twitter followed by another former Today co-host, Katie Couric (60 percent positive, 40 percent negative). Meanwhile Good Morning America's Robin Roberts (72 percent positive, 28 percent negative) also had an overwhelmingly positive score.

General Sentiment uses a proprietary methodology to measure public perception via Twitter and other social media including Facebook, Google+, Mediashare, blogs and online forums.

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The company also measures the positive-to-negative ratio of media coverage – opinions expressed in professional media outlets including newspapers, magazines and television – via a text analysis platform that uses patented natural language processing technology to read every article, line by line, and analyze positive and negative references.

GMA generated higher news sentiment (54 percent positive, 46 percent negative) than Today (46 percent positive, 54 percent negative). But GMA had a lower social and twitter sentiment (62 percent positive, 38 percent negative) compared to Today (67.5 percent positive, 32.5 percent negative).