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Amy Robach and TJ Holmes appeared in high spirits as they welcomed viewers back to ABC’s “GMA3” on the Monday after Thanksgiving.
“TJ is multitasking today,” Robach explained as she sat between a Holmes with a laptop and her co-host Jennifer Ashton. When Holmes insisted he only consult the show’s agenda, Robach grinned. “Or maybe what World Cup game is on?” she teased.
Ashton tried to engage in the jokes, but Robach and Holmes were gone and running, and the camera quickly focused on just the two of them.
“Why do I confide in you about anything when you’re going to tell?!” excited Holmes, 45.
“Confidence?!?” shouted Robach, 49, pointing to his laptop. “Everyone can see!”
“Well, they don’t know what’s going on. Let’s not do this in front of people,” Holmes said with a laugh, seamlessly weaving his anchor banter into a transition on how viewers could also multitask and shop for those Cyber Monday deals.
TV news executives spend countless hours and millions of dollars conjuring up this kind of on-air electricity — the hilarious banter and simple consolation between co-hosts that convince viewers to make a show a part of their daily routine . But moments like this – and there have been many since Robach and Holmes began co-hosting the afternoon spinoff of Good Morning America in 2020 – were shone in a new light on Wednesday after the Chron published an in-depth investigation , which revealed the relationship between the presenters, both married to others, had become romantic.
After a tense few days, ABC News executives at least temporarily removed the pair from the air on Monday, their future unclear. It was a move that felt both ironic and inevitable: It never hurts a show to have co-hosts who clearly love each other, and falling in love at work is hardly unprecedented. Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski married in 2018 after feuding on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” for more than a decade.
But a new romance can also add volatility to the tightrope walk of live television and the family dynamics we expect from the people who bring us the news — particularly on the morning and afternoon programs, which “air healthy,” Evan Nierman said. CEO of global crisis PR firm Red Banyan.
Suddenly, Robach and Holmes are “talking” in a way they’ve never been before, Nierman noted. “But it’s a pretty common rule in journalism that you don’t want to become a story.”
When the Chron contacted ABC on Wednesday, Holmes initially denied to his bosses that he and Robach were involved, according to a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an internal matter. That same morning, the tabloid published not only a report on the affair, but also 60 photos in which the two look cozy. One sequence showed the pair grabbing their car after a trip to a remote cabin in upstate New York and his hand lovingly grazing her bottom. Since then, the network has been on the decline.
The story caused an internet storm. Holmes appeared on the show without Robach that day, and both deleted their Instagram accounts. Anonymous sources were quickly sent to the tabloids; Some reported that the two split from their spouses over the summer.
Both hosts did Schuhleder reports in local TV markets — Holmes in his native Arkansas, Robach in Charleston, SC before moving on to Washington’s WTTG (Ch. 5) — before moving into the softer, personality-focused realm of morning television. Robach joined ABC in 2012 and Holmes in 2014. Both are remarried to spouses they married in 2010: Robach to former Melrose Place actor Andrew Shue and Holmes to attorney Marilee Fiebig. Neither Holmes nor Robach responded with a request for comment.
First, ABC executives noted that the affair was a personal affair between consenting adults, according to an executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity. And on Thursday, Robach and Holmes were back together in front of the camera, joking about the anticipation of the weekend, a mood that turned dizzying the next day.
“You know, it’s too bad it’s Friday,” Holmes said to Robach with a funny irony, noting the “great week” he had enjoyed. “I just want this one to go on and on and on, just enjoy it.”
“Speak for yourself,” Robach replied, laughing. The two then broke out in giggles during a wellness segment about how poppy seed bagels can trigger a positive drug test result.
However, network executives decided on Saturday that a break was necessary as they planned their next steps. A spate of reports surfaced in the New York Post alleging that Holmes had had other workplace romances and that colleagues had long been suspicious of his proximity to Robach. On Monday, ABC News President Kimberly Godwin told employees that while the relationship was not a violation of company policy, the couple “has become an internal and external distraction.”
Although the controversy involved a lesser-known offshoot of the more popular “Good Morning America,” the network’s response spoke to the deeply invested audience that matters in the lives of the newscasters they meet every day.
While the news has garnered “GMA3” far more attention than ever before — according to Nielsen, ratings soared 12 percent above their average the day after the Chron story was published — it’s not the kind of attention broadcast executives want enjoy.
If the couple is important to the network, “they will find a way to deal with it [the relationship]’ said Jonathan Klein, the former president of CNN, where he employed Holmes as an anchor from 2006 to 2011. “But if the romance turns out to be bad for the show, they could use that as an excuse to break up with them.”
In an otherwise fragmented media landscape, the co-host dynamic of television news remains a touchstone and constant, especially as morning shows have staked some of the last claims to mass appeal. Without their morning shows, CBS News and ABC News would be losing money. (NBC News would still be profitable, helped by its MSNBC cable arm.)
Finding that elusive balance of happiness, gravitas, and chemistry between the hosts is difficult, and it can play out publicly and chaotically — from NBC’s disastrous process of pushing Ann Curry off “Today” to shoving her through Savannah Guthrie in 2012 to Kelly Ripa telling viewers how stunned she was to learn at the last minute that co-host Michael Strahan was leaving Live! Going to Good Morning America in 2016.
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In the early days, television news was generally delivered by one person seated behind a desk, said Mendes J. Napoli, executive director of Napoli Management Group, a division of Paradigm Media Entertainment. But executives eventually argued that it would be wise to split authority between two journalists — if viewers don’t warm to one, they might bond with the other.
Typically, these two journalists were men, even in the freeform realm of morning television, where co-hosts in the early days included a chimp — J. Fred Muggs, who helped Dave Garroway make “Today” a hit for NBC — and comedians Ernie Kovacs, who showed up as the lisping “Poet Laureate” at Philadelphia’s WPTZ in 1950.
But after Barbara Walters joined “Today” in the 1960s and eventually became a co-host, executives realized that “morning shows tend to have a significant female audience and they want to invite a woman they can relate to,” Mitchell Stephens said , who taught journalism at New York University and has written several books on the history of the news business.
“Viewers were drawn to the chemistry between the two presenters,” said Napoli, who represents hundreds of TV channels. “I hate to use the word ‘family,’ but people really considered them family.”
When British stage director Simon Godwin was looking for a new way to stage a new production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, he realized he needed a plausible setting to convey the banter between Benedict and Beatrice – two romantic leads who are the most Spending money – making sense of the game of verbal sparring while denying their obvious feelings for each other.
Where else can you display this kind of chemistry, full of public-private tensions? For his production, which runs through Sunday at Washington’s Shakespeare Theater Company, Godwin made Benedick and Beatrice co-hosts on radio news.
“The adrenaline of presenting the news together is, I would say, a bonding experience. And you’re out there presenting yourself as a couple,” Godwin said. “For many people, the media is part of their family – and the stakes feel very high.”