Ann Curry will finally leave NBC two years after her messy breakup with “Today.” We all remember how Matt Lauer engineered her departure (as a condition of his contract renewal). Ann cried on her final day as anchor, and she couldn’t even look at Matt as he faked sympathy. The whole mess resulted in Matt Lauer’s damaged brand and waning popularity. Matt went on a press tour to say Ann’s departure wasn’t his fault.

NBC shuffled Ann into the “anchor at large” position. They gave her throwaway jobs like covering the Olympics. Ann did cover some humanitarian stories, but NBC didn’t give her much airtime. She still managed to score 5 Emmy nominations last year. Ann is now leaving NBC altogether. Page Six says she was deeply “unhappy” and wanted out of her $12 million per year contract. An NBC insider added that the network was equally bummed that they paid Ann “a lot of money to do nothing.” Ouch.

Ann issued a press release about her new job. She’s developing her own media start-up, which will be distributed over several news platforms. She’ll be seeded by NBCUniversal (probably part of her departure negotiations). Ann stayed classy: “I am sincerely grateful to NBC News for allowing me to offer viewers a vast and diverse body of work. It has been a privilege to work with so many good and talented people at the network. At the same time, I can’t wait to expand my reach and work with people I admire in other places.” She wants to move on, and that should have ended the discussion.

NBC can’t let this mess go. One of their veteran executives dialed up the Daily Beast and threw some bottles in Ann’s direction:

“Ann is very likable — she’s a good person,” a veteran NBC News executive told the Daily Beast, “but a lot of people at NBC didn’t like that she and her representatives waged a campaign solely targeted at Matt Lauer and that it just never stopped. Whether she personally orchestrated it, I don’t know, but there’s no question she was involved. And as far as anybody knows, it continues to this day. It was unfair when she started it, and it’s unfair today.”

“Nobody put a gun to her head to sign the contract,” the veteran executive said. “There were extensive conversations about what the company would say and would Ann would say, and then it all kind of fell apart, and she never did anything to set the record straight.”

The executive added: “Everybody understood the emotion, of course. Ann cared deeply about the kind of work she was doing … She is a good person and she wears her heart on her sleeve, and her emotions were on full display that terrible morning on the Today show … But she never tried to move off of that, and she played the blame game, and never considered her own actions.”

That Curry apparently continued to hold a grudge against Lauer — an impression that was painfully conspicuous during an awkward and chilly joint appearance during NBC’s Olympics coverage a few weeks after her goodbye — was especially galling to the suits, because she was taking so much of the company’s money. “Many people thought it was hypocritical,” said the executive.

Not surprisingly, a source close to Curry vigorously disputed those assertions, and added: “We’re not going to into a ‘he said, she said’ thing. All I can tell you is people can say anything they want to minimize what Ann’s done … but the facts speak for themselves. Ann’s coming off a year where she’s been nominated for five Emmys. She produced a report on climate change that was extremely well-received … she had an interview with the president of Iran. So Ann’s had an incredible year and she’s taking that momentum into this new venture that’s going to allow her to appear on all sorts of platforms in addition to NBC — other networks and other news outlets. This is going to be a great move for Ann.”

[From The Daily Beast]

I understand where some of this angst comes from. Ann was fantastic during her years at the “Today” news desk, but she wasn’t a good fit for the anchor position. She got too emotional with every story, and she did embarrassing things on-air like fangirl on Brad Pitt. The problem (for NBC) was that people liked Ann, and the network handled her ousting terribly. The NBC executive tried to tell the Beast that Lauer wasn’t the one who kicked Ann out, but that’s a silly statement. Matt’s feelings about Ann were all over his face for months. He may not have pulled the trigger, but he was a deciding factor in her departure. Now NBC is whining about Ann, who was guilty of being “a good person” and used that vibe to her advantage. I don’t understand … was she supposed to hug Matt Lauer and refuse a correspondent paycheck? NBC needs to put a lid on their people, now.

Good luck to Ann on her new gig! She sounds really happy about the move.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet & WENN