Hoda Kotb, a fixture at NBC for more than two decades, says she will leave her morning perch on the “Today” show early next year, telling staffers “it’s time.”

In a memo to her team — and later in an emotional on-air reveal Thursday — Kotb said her 60th birthday helped trigger the departure: “I saw it all so clearly: My broadcast career has been beyond meaningful, a new decade of my life lies ahead, and now my daughters and my mom need and deserve a bigger slice of my time pie.”

Her daughters are Haley, 7, and Hope, 5.

Kotb was surrounded by her co-workers when she told viewers of her decision, saying, “This is the hardest thing in the world,” and, “I’ve been practicing so I wouldn’t cry, but anyway, I did.”

“We love you so much,” her co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, said with tears in her eyes. “And when you look around and see these tears, they’re love. You are so loved. We don’t want to imagine this place without you.”

Kotb’s goodbye note mentioned many of her co-workers: “Savannah: my rock. Jenna: my ride-or-die. Al: my longest friend at 30 Rock.”

“Happily and gratefully, I plan to remain a part of the NBC family, the longest work relationship I’ve been lucky enough to hold close to my heart. I’ll be around. How could I not?” she wrote.

Cure drop new music: Goths, rejoice: At long last, the Cure has released new music. “Alone,” its first new song in 16 years, premiered on Mary Anne Hobbs’ BBC 6 Music radio show Thursday. The English band also announced a new album, “Songs of A Lost World,” slated for release Nov. 1.

The Cure teased new music on social media leading up to its release, sharing a snippet of the song that featured the band’s trademark layered guitars, metallic percussion and sparkling synths. Near the end, singer Robert Smith jumped in with the gloomy lyrics, “This is the end of every song that we sing.”

“It’s the track that unlocked the record; as soon as we had that piece of music recorded I knew it was the opening song, and I felt the whole album come into focus,” Smith said in a news release.

Streisand OKs documentary: A year after telling her story in a 1,000-page memoir, Barbra Streisand has approved a multipart documentary about her life — to be directed by fellow Oscar winner Frank Marshall.

The documentary, announced Thursday by Sony Music Vision, is currently untitled and does not have a release date. It will feature rarely seen video, photographs and audio recordings from Streisand’s personal archives.

“For years, I’ve been thinking about the best way to share the vast amount of content I’ve been safely storing in my vault,” Streisand, 82, said. “I’m so pleased that producer Alex Gibney and director Frank Marshall have agreed to take this journey with me.”

Sept. 27 birthdays: Actor Kathleen Nolan is 91. Musician Randy Bachman is 81. Actor Liz Torres is 77. Actor A Martinez is 76. Actor Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa is 74. Singer Shaun Cassidy is 66. Comedian Marc Maron is 61. Actor Gwyneth Paltrow is 52. Singer Brad Arnold is 46. Rapper Lil’ Wayne is 42. Singer Avril Lavigne is 40.