Dear Gossips,    

The last time I posted about the Amy Robach and TJ Holmes scandal it was from the media-on-media angle, and how it was curiously the Daily Mail that broke open their romance with multiple exclusives. As noted, the Daily Mail had to have been tipped off by someone on the inside, someone connected to Amy and TJ, perhaps someone within the ABC and Good Morning America family. And my point was to highlight just how accurate Brian Stelter’s depiction of the morning television business was in his book, Top of the Morning. 

 

Because interestingly enough, there’s a name that’s been coming up over the last few days: Lara Spencer. I’m not saying Lara Spencer is the leaker, not at all. This is just, again, a comment on how morning television is different behind the cameras than it is in front of the cameras. Anyway, what’s curious is that two days ago Us Weekly reported that “Amy Robach’s inner circle believe Lara Spencer pushed for her and TJ Holmes’s [to take a] break from Good Morning America”. 

As confirmed earlier this week, Amy and TJ are off the air “indefinitely” while ABC sorts this mess out. Back to the Us Weekly story though, if you click on the link to the story, Lara Spencer’s name has been taken out of it and all details about whatever they were reporting about Lara are gone.

It still comes up on Google search though – see below: 

Google search for Amy Robach and TJ Holmes
 

So for whatever reason Us Weekly changed their article. They do, however, still randomly have an article up that was posted the same day about Amy and Lara’s friendship. Still, other outlets picked up the original Us Weekly story about Amy and Lara and those articles are still intact, like this one at Yahoo!. Here are the details:

“Drama behind the scenes? Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes were temporarily benched from GMA3 — and an insider exclusively tells Us Weekly that Robach's inner circle think her coworker Lara Spencer is behind the removal.

"The bosses were thrilled and giddy with the ratings on Friday, but now Amy and T.J. are suddenly off the show," the source claims. "It's not a delayed reaction — something happened and [people close to] Amy are blaming Lara.”

A separate source close to Spencer completely denies the host had involvement. “Lara doesn’t have the power or influence to remove Amy or T.J. off air in any way. The decision was made by ABC bosses to calm internal and external distraction the situation has caused."

According to the source, the tension dates back to late 2012, when Robin Roberts took a break from GMA while recovering from a bone marrow transplant.

 

"Lara was livid that Amy was seen by bosses as Robin's heir-apparent," the insider tells Us. "It was clear that Amy would be the one to step in. Lara wanted the gig and hasn't ever forgotten it."

However, a third source insists Spencer has been one of the more caring colleagues since the scandal broke. “People have their own idea of what’s going on behind-the-scenes. Lara is supporting Amy,” the source says.

Lara has spoken out before about how women are pitted against each other and can’t just accept that she and Amy are not competitive with each other. So the question here is whether or not the tabloid media is feeding into those stereotypes or whether or not what’s going on behind the scenes at ABC and GMA right now is illuminating the truths in Brian Stelter’s Top of the Morning…some of which we see portrayed fictionally in The Morning Show, starring Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon. 

This is what intrigues me most about the scandal – don’t really care about the details of the affair but I do want to know the inside baseball that’s going down right now: the finger-pointing, who’s selling out who, which rivalries are being exposed, and who smells an opportunity to advance. That’s the real show behind the show. 

Yours in gossip,

Lainey