13 years, she would leave the Today show in December, but would soon begin working on other projects at NBC. Public reaction amid the perception that Pauley was being cast aside for a younger woman was swift and consequential. As The New York Times reported on February 26, 1990, in the three weeks since January 26, the Today show lost 10 percent of its audience. Since Jane Pauley left as co-host and Deborah Norville replaced her, the Today show had fallen from its leadership position in the competition among the three network morning shows to a distant second place, almost a full rating point behind ABC's Good Morning America. A July 23, 1990 New York Magazine article entitled "Back From the Brink, Jane Pauley Has Become America's Favorite Newswoman" reported that from February 1989 to February 1990, Today experienced a ratings slump of 22% and the cost to the network and its affiliates was estimated by one insider at close to $10 million for the year. After Pauley announced she was leaving Today, she received more than 4000 letters of support, including one from Michael Kinsley, then of The New Republic, which anointed her "heroine of my generation. The first Baby Boomer they tried to put out to pasture … and failed." Pauley's image was run on the cover of many magazines those months, including the December 1989 cover of Life magazine with the headline "Our Loss, Her Dream: How Jane Pauley got what she wanted – time for her kids, prime time for herself". New York Magazine dubbed her "The Loved One" on its July 23, 1990 cover. Pauley returned to the air in a March 13, 1990 NBC in a primetime special appropriately titled "Changes: Conversations with Jane Pauley." As she said during the introduction, "Change is not always an option. Change is not always the right choice. But change is almost always the most interesting." According to The Washington Post, March 15, 1990, the one-hour broadcast won its 10 p.m. time-slot Tuesday with a 13.3 national Nielsen rating and a 24 percent audience share. In 1990, Pauley co-hosted the 42nd Primetime Emmy Awards, alongside Candice Bergen and Jay Leno and began to serve as substitute anchor for NBC Nightly News. The success of Changes launched five one-hour specials the summer of 1990 called "Real Life with Jane Pauley". They were also ratings hits, and in January 1991