The 'Today' anchor flashed her personal phone number on the screen of a new Samsung phone watch during the show.
- Sep 6, 2013
AceShowbiz - Hoda Kotb was dealing with an unexpected situation on "Today" show Thursday, September 5. The host accidentally showed off her private phone number when demonstrating the advanced functions of the new Samsung wrist phone to the audience.
The gaffe happened when the anchor called the Samsung watch phone from her iPhone as a test. When it was connected and the phone watch was shown on a close-up snapshot, her number appeared on its screen. "Did it really show my number?" she asked. "Oh my God."
Almost immediately, calls were flooding into Kotb's phone from all over the country. "That was from Bridgeport," she said after taking one of the calls on air. Her co-anchor Kathie Lee Gifford joked, "Hoda, you have a lot of fans and a couple of prisoners."
After a commercial break, a flustered Kotb said she had received around 20 phone calls and more than a thousand text messages. "Oh my god, it's happening. Oh my god," she said.
She had actually been warned by Gifford before the demonstration. "Cassidy never forgave me," Gifford said, referring to a similar incident in 2004 when she accidentally showed her daughter's phone number after flashing her phone to the camera when her daughter called her.
