Jenna Bush Hager and Sheinelle Jones must fill an hour of live TV every weekday, so it\u2019s a good thing they have a lot to talk about.<\/p>\n
In the opening week of the duo\u2019s debut in the fourth hour of NBC\u2019s \u201cToday,<\/a>\u201d Jones and Hager have discussed everything from family tragedy to keeping weight off, all with Oprah Winfrey, Sarah Jessica Parker, Marcello Hernandez and even their predecessors on the show, Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb<\/a>, stopping by to visit.<\/p>\n More from Variety<\/p>\n \u201cWe want people to leave a little more joyful than they came,\u201d says Bush Hager, during an interview less than an hour after the duo\u2019s first official telecast together. She has been with \u201cToday\u201d since 2009 and with the 10 a.m. hour as a dedicated host since 2019. For the past year, she worked with a series of guest anchors<\/a> as NBC News worked to determine who might succeed Kotb on screen.<\/p>\n Finding on-screen chemistry is never guaranteed, but Jones and Bush Hager aren\u2019t strangers to one another. The two forged stronger ties during a past Olympics, when most of the morning-show crew went to cover the event and they stayed behind \u2014 \u00a0\u201cjust in case anything went down\u201d back at home, says Bush Hager. During that time, the pair spent three hours each day \u201cjust hanging out for two weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n NBC is betting that Jones\u2019 warmth and Bush Hager\u2019s spirit will make for a formidable combination in TV\u2019s never-ending battle for daytime audience.\u00a0 The 10 a.m. hour represents NBC\u2019s bid to compete for live viewership in the late mornings, and to carve out some of the ground also tilled by ABC\u2019s syndicated \u201cLive,\u201d with spouses Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos, or CBS\u2019 \u201cDrew Barrymore.\u201d The network has long called upon the hosts of \u201cToday\u201d at 10 a.m. to be looser than their colleagues in the show\u2019s earlier hours. And they may need to be. In this era of digital media, there\u2019s a wider field of rivals to consider, with everything from Alex Cooper\u2019s \u201cCall Her Daddy\u201d podcast to any number of TikTok personalities dispensing advice and inspiration.<\/p>\n This first week has served as a way for the hour\u2019s audience to get to know Jones better. She often does a rapid-fire hand tap on the desk to signal excitement, and viewers learned her story of graduating from Northwestern University, interning at KWCH in Wichita, Kansas and working at Philadelphia\u2019s WTXF. Producers invited one of the host\u2019s early inspirations, Kassandra Fleming, spurring much surprise and a few tears.<\/p>\n \u201cI was trying to keep my composure,\u201d Jones acknowledged. \u201cI was blown away.\u201d<\/p>\n There may be other times to get emotional \u2014 and that, the co-hosts said, is OK. Jones says she is still grappling with the recent death of her husband, Uche Ojeh, who passed in 2025 after months spent battling glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer.<\/p>\n \u201cIn some ways, I\u2019m living it in real time as viewers watch it,\u201d says Jones. \u201cI\u2019m not on the other side of it, if you will. I don\u2019t know if you\u2019re ever on the other side. I\u2019m processing it and I\u2019m still pretty close to it.\u201d But she hopes the audience will follow along as he makes her way. \u201cMy hope is they see that I can hold one thing that\u2019s pretty painful but still wake up every day and look for new challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n Working with Bush Hager will give Jones the chance to let the audience see a different side of her. The fourth hour of \u201cToday,\u201d says Bush Hager, \u201cis slightly different than a straight news program. There\u2019s a lot of space for personality and a lot of space for dreams and hope.\u201d No doubt, viewers will see more as the two work their way through more shows.<\/p>\n Best of Variety<\/p>\n Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jenna Bush Hager and Sheinelle Jones must fill an hour of live TV every weekday, so it\u2019s a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248605,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[124806,93,61,60,8962,14043,3422,99526,282],"class_list":{"0":"post-248604","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-bush-hager","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-jenna-bush-hager","13":"tag-oprah-winfrey","14":"tag-sarah-jessica-parker","15":"tag-sheinelle-jones","16":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}