It’s one of TV Land’s favorite parlour games: dissecting who’s up and who’s down in the seemingly endless war for Morning Show supremacy.

Variety is out this week with the latest peek behind the battle lines, with heavy emphasis on how NBC’s Today is planning to retake the crown it held for so many years before it was snatched away by ABC’s Good Morning America in the ugliness that was Ann Currygate in 2012.

The unseemliness at the anchor desk aside, Today also seems to have tripped itself up with an attempt to feature more lurid crime stories and celeb stories in a broadcast once known for a harder news edge in the early hours of the show.

“I’ll be blunt. I think we lost our way a little bit a while ago,” longtime anchor Matt Lauer tells Variety.

The magazine points out that both GMA and Today are still major profit centers for parent companies Disney and Comcast, so the shows are fighting for more than just bragging rights.

Both shows are now trying to capture the rising generation of Millennial viewers by upping the emphasis on video content that can be shared across smartphones and social networks. Today, for example, has employed The Voice’s Carson Daly to hang out in its orange room and report on Twitter trends and scintillating selfies.

For the moment, GMA is still the leader in both total viewers and in the key adult 25-54 demographic, although Today is much more competitive in the demo.

Read More: Variety

Brief Take: It may seem like the Morning Show War That Will Never End, but securing the top spot in the AM is more important than ever in an age of fragmented viewership and declining ad spending.

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