Ryan Seacrest Covering 2012 Summer Olympics in London for NBC

Credit: Jmk7

Seacrest says he “[plans] to stay” with American Idol

Seacrest to join Meredith Vieira for NBC’s London Olympic coverage

Ryan Seacrest stopped by Today Wednesday morning (April 4) to make a big announcement – but no, he’s not taking Matt Lauer’s anchor job, a rumor that has been flying since last December when Seacrest met with some head honchos from NBC Universal.

Instead, Seacrest will be joining the NBC primetime team for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Former Today anchor Meredith Vieira has already announced that she will be joining the Olympics coverage team as well.

Seacrest also didn’t come right out and officially announce his return to American Idol, but he did say, “I plan to stay there. I think I’ll have an official announcement very, very soon. I expect to be on that show.”

Of course, there were plenty of jokes about Seacrest taking Lauer’s job. Seacrest cracked, “I see you doing this for as long as you want to, so maybe the question is, how long will you be on The Today Show?”

Seacrest also cracked that his meetings with the NBC Universal executives were “mostly about filling in to do the weather.”

And Lauer was very gracious about the rumors, saying, “I think you would be great at this job, and secondly . . . Ryan and I are friendly. We have talked about this and joked about this. There is no tension here. I bought dinner, which I think was completely inappropriate. [laughs]”