President Obama‘s revealing interview on NBC’s TODAY covered plenty of ground, from the scandal surrounding Rep. Anthony Weiner to the economy, his family, and the president’s own feelings about his time in office. “I’m sure there are days where I say that one term is enough,’’ Obama said. “What keeps me going is a belief that the work that we started in 2009 is not yet complete.’’ The president told TODAY co-host Ann Curry that if, for some reason, he should decide not to seek a second term, his wife and daughters would not be disappointed.

The Today has gotten a huge get in the form of an exclusive interview with President Obama in which he speaks about the scandal involving Rep. Anthony Weiner. Asides from comments from White House Press Secretary Jay Carney that the entire situation was nothing but “a distraction,” this will be the first official statement from the White House. Not only that, he told Today‘s Ann Curry that, were he in Weiner’s shoes, he “would resign.”

In a typically over-the-top farewell from TODAY to its departing co-host Meredith Vieira, the NBC morning show’s entire staff, from co-host Matt Lauer to Vieira’s replacement Ann Curry and every member of the show’s production team–all wearing matching t-shirts–took to Rockefeller Plaza in a lip sync performance right out of Glee.

MSNBC’s Rundown co-host Chuck Todd said farewell to his co-host Savannah Guthrie Friday, popping the cork for an on-set champagne toast as Guthrie prepares for her move to NBC’s TODAY. In a tweet about the morning, Guthrie told followers she and Todd were “kickin it like KLG and Hoda,” a reference to TODAY’s Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb, who’ve been known to enjoy a late morning mimosa from time to time.

In her first comments since announcing on-air this morning that she would leave NBC’s TODAY in June, Meredith Vieira told reporters it was a “tough decision” that took months to make to decide to depart the program. “I had to go with my gut, but it doesn’t make it any easier.”

Vieira said she began considering a departure from television’s top-rated network morning show in January, but didn’t say anything about the move officially until she announced her decision Monday morning on the show–confirming one of the worst kept secrets in television. “It didn’t take WikiLeaks for this to come out,” said NBC News president Steve Capus.

An emotional moment this morning on The Today Show as Meredith Vieira officially announced her departure from the show which will take place next month. Sitting next to Matt Lauer, Al Roker, Ann Curry and Natalie Morales, Vieira revealed how much she loved the job but how she truly wanted more time to spend with her family.

With the morning show landscape in flux, Mediaite has learned that another big move may be in the works, this one at CBS. Chris Licht, the well respected executive producer of MSNBC’s buzzy Morning Joe program is likely to announce that he is leaving the show to take the top spot on CBS’s struggling Early Show. While last we heard the deal was not finalized, our sources indicate it is “very close.”

The Hollywood Reporter is citing “sources with direct knowledge of the situation” to report Meredith Vieira, as expected, will be leaving NBC’s dominant TODAY show in June, nearly three months before the end of her contract. Ann Curry will take Vieira’s spot as co-host alongside Matt Lauer, according to the report, and Natalie Morales will replace Curry as newsreader.

Insiders say the moves were made to carefully protect the TODAY brand from a newly invigorated challenge by ABC’s Good Morning America:

With the announcement this week that Meredith Vieira, co-host of NBC’s top-rated TODAY might not extend her contract when it expires in the fall, attention will surely focus on TODAY‘s news anchor, Ann Curry. While she hasn’t commented on the reports of Vieira’s interest in sleeping in and escaping the rigor of a network morning show, Curry did write about Vieira’s hiring for the job–and her being passed over–back in 2006. “What some might consider a big professional disappointment—not being named cohost of TODAY when Katie Couric left—has only clarified my mission. I would’ve loved that job, but not getting it made me think, What is it I need to be doing?”

In the article, a cover story in Guideposts magazine, Curry wrote the answer to her question of “what is it I need to be doing” came in the form of humanitarian reporting, which she has done in the years since, traveling around the world and solidifying her stature as one of NBC News’ top correspondents. She shared a story from her reporting with Guideposts:

No April foolin’: the so-old-it’s-fresh-again gag of the “snake in the can” proved it’s still got it. This morning on NBC’s TODAY, Matt Lauer launched into a bogus story about potato chip cans that are so child proofed that adult can’t open them. And he handed the can to Ann Curry, who had no trouble getting the lid off, of course. And out jumped an impressively long purple snake. Zing!

You might think a person who says they can’t close their eyes would avoid the brightly-lit environments of television studios. But not for Marilyn Leisz, the woman who claims she was left unable to blink or close her eyes after a surgical procedure. She talked to TODAY‘s Ann Curry, and said she felt like her “whole life has been stolen.”

Leisz sued the doctor who did her surgery and won $115,000–but she said Friday she still endures daily pain and is at risk for blindness. She says a procedure called “eyelid skin graft” is possible, but it requires major surgery and brings added risk. “I could be totally disfigured.”

On NBC’s TODAY this morning, Ann Curry had a happy story to share amid the widespread misery in Japan: an early-morning tweet from a family in the U.S. led Curry to find a family member unaccounted for in one of the country’s hardest-hit areas. Equipped with a photo of the missing relative, a schoolteacher, Curry searched–and found her.

The missing teacher, Canon Purdy, had just returned to Japan on the day of the earthquake–returning to the village of Minamisanriku, which was largely washed away by the tsunami.

Dictators have the darnedest luck. The Russian government would have likely gotten in a fair bit of trouble for invading neighboring Georgia in 2008 if everyone, including President George W. Bush, wasn’t too busy slappin’ booties at the Beijing Olympics. In 2009, the deaths of protesters in Iran over the legitimacy of their elections was silenced by the passing of Michael Jackson. And now, it seems, Libya’s elderly Caligula Muammar Gaddafi seems to have lucked out as well, with a devastating 8.9 magnitude earthquake shifting the epicenter of all media coverage to the other side of the world: Tokyo, Japan.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has yet again doused hopes from some corners that he might be thinking of running for president in 2012, saying reports that a longtime associate had formed a federal political action committee to capitalize on Christie fever was no sign he’s actually thinking of giving it a go. “I don’t have a federal PAC. That was an old partner of mine. I haven’t done it. I don’t have any plans to do it,” he told the TODAY Show’s Ann Curry. “But I’m not running,”

During this morning’s broadcast of Today, the show’s hosts had to contend with more than just the usual early wake-ups and funny animal stories: a man jumped over a barricade at Rockefeller Plaza, where the show tapes, yelling incoherently. Good morning!

Hey, did you hear there was a bit of a snowstorm over the weekend? We’re still checking with our sources about the official media label for the storm–Boxing Day Blizzard doesn’t seem likely, given the fact that nobody knows what the heck Boxing Day is–but we can tell you the gang at 30 Rock rocked the battle for Monday morning snow coverage domination by opening TODAY with hosts Ann Curry and Lester Holt atop a monster snowpile (shoveled, they admit right up front, not a drift) in the heart of Rockefeller Center.

NBC’s TODAY got its viral video groove on Thursday morning, with the help of known-more-for-videos-than-music OK Go. The gang that turned treadmills into bazillions of web clicks put Matt Lauer, Meredith Viera, Ann Curry and Al Roker into some kind of crazy claustrophobic (and massively ping-pong filled) department store dressing rooms–and spun them naturally.

Earlier today, the team over at the Today Show invited Trish Regan over from CNBC to show off Sony’s new desktop tablet, the Sony Dash. The device sits atop whatever table or desk you want and can be programmed, through numerous free apps, to show you news, email, stock market reports, movies, and what have you. It also can show you the weather, which led to the group fearing for poor Al Roker‘s job.

If you are a watcher of the nightly network newscasts you probably noticed that the all the networks had got their teams on the ground in Haiti in order to be able to broadcast live from there last night. It was no easy feat. The trip, which Anderson Cooper was the first to make, had media orgs flying by the seat of their pants, sometimes almost literally.

Anyone who works in media these days — especially online — knows that it can be an all-consuming lifestyle, caught up in the immediacy of the 24-7 news cycle and very much given to being swept up by the wildly fluctuating highs and lows of the moment. That’s why it’s so nice to step back [...]

As part of a week-long prank battle the hosts of the popular morning show traded tricks in order to playfully embarrass the unsuspecting. So you’d think the cast would be a tad wary when TV Guide Magazine booked a photo shoot for the Today stars, claiming to have crowned them “The Greatest Television Cast of All Time.” Preposterous, no? Video inside.

No matter what, Hillary Clinton always seems to be answering questions regarding the powerful men around her. Not to get to MoDo on the subject but it must get tiring. Then again, she’s not the Secretary of State for nothing. Today she addresses Obama’s Nobel win, and the eternal question: has she been side-lined.

It’s no secret that we’re obsessed with competition and we get our kicks from big movement on the Power Grid. Recently malady has been responsible for movement in the rankings: just look at Dr. Sanjay Gupta and New York Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin . But who were the other big movers and shakers, and why the fluctuation? Find out inside.

Ann Curry revealed via her Twitter feed earlier today that her return flight from Iran was forced to make an emergency landing today because of an oil leak. Curry was returning from Iran where she interviewed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran (video inside). While her interview with the Iran leader had some dramatic moments, things got much dicier on Curry’s flight home.

Ann Curry sat down with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday for his first interview since the Iranian elections and the unrest in Iran — and got some revealing non-answers from him. Did he steal the election? “I don’t know what you mean by that.” Was there was any scenario under which Iran would develop nukes? “We do not see any need for such weapons.” And then there was this: “I don’t know what you mean by ‘no.’”