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KTRK's Dave Ward is recovering from open heart surgery. He's retiring this month. http://abc13.com/society/dave-ward-recovering-from-heart-surgery/1640981/

I did read the book and Stelter's reporting that preceded it. Bell was the driving force behind firing Curry and getting her off the show. That's not to say that Lauer is innocent because he isn't, he could've stepped in to defend her but he didn't. Everybody knows he didn't like working with her, didn't want her in the first place and that he had complained about her to management. But the reporting indicates that Bell was the first one to deem Curry the problem and decided that she had to go. From Stelter: "By comparison, “Today” had stuck to the same camera angles and scripted intros and outros since the 1990s. Some suggested that the show was getting stale. Others privately wondered if Lauer’s star power was beginning to fade. By January, Bell had another culprit in mind: Ann Curry. So insistent was Bell that Curry was the problem — that she was “out of position,” as he put it in an e-mail to his deputies — that he had been talking about it with friends for months. One morning-TV veteran suggested to him that firing Curry, who had been co-hosting for only about six months at that point, would be tantamount to “killing Bambi.” Undeterred, Bell hatched a careful three-part plan: 1.) persuade Lauer to extend his expiring contract; 2.) oust Curry; 3.) replace her with Savannah Guthrie. According to this source, Bell called his plan Operation Bambi. ... At “Today,” the enmity started at the highest levels, between Bell and the man who was technically his boss, Steve Capus, the president of NBC News. Capus, who was known around the office as “the Rage,” a reference to his short temper, resented Bell, who was adept at navigating NBC’s internal politics and who was perceived to be close to Steve Burke, the chief executive of NBCUniversal. When Capus learned that Bell wanted to force Curry out, he invoked “the streak” and argued that her removal would force the show out of first place. So Bell appealed directly to Burke. “We need to make a change,” Bell told him. Burke ultimately agreed. Operation Bambi was a go." http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/magazine/who-can-save-the-today-show.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 From New York Magazine: "Within six months, executive producer Jim Bell had come to the conclusion that Curry wasn’t working out. She frequently stumbled over the words on the teleprompter and her intensity sometimes made her difficult to watch during interviews with tragedy victims. But, more important, Lauer looked awkward and unhappy next to her—a situation that Lauer himself had also diagnosed. He openly complained about her to NBC staffers and to Bell. And the ratings seemed to reflect her struggles." http://nymag.com/news/features/today-show-hosts-2013-4/index1.html

You're not the only one who thinks that.

I may be right or wrong, but if you go over to the SouthernMedia's News Music Search Archive website, take a listen to the KWES 2002 Closing Theme. If you take a listen, the theme sounds like a Tuesday Productions piece. In fact, if I am not too badly mistaken, this may very well be part of the KAKE 1988 package done by Tuesday.