Showing posts with label Matt Lauder. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Matt Lauder. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Broadcasters around the world are shifting into their highest gear to cover Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding Friday.

LONDON -- As the big day draws near, it's not just the bride who may be feeling a little anxious.


With predictions are that it will draw the biggest audience in television history, broadcasters around the world are shifting into their highest gear for the royal wedding, and for the next few days London will become the focus of the world.


"Yes, we're moving to London. Where else would you be?" says Chris Hampson, NBC News' director of international news. "Everybody wants to be here. You can't sit in New York and tell this story. You have to be right in the thick of it."


And the thick of it is exactly where the world's biggest media organizations will be. Take a stroll down London's Mall toward Buckingham Palace, and the bland, tree-lined vista used mainly for bypassing the traffic chaos of Piccadilly has been transformed into a hive of pre-ceremony activity.


The traffic has been shut off, and behind the milling tourists and Japanese camera crews, two huge temporary media studios have been erected opposite either flank of the Queen's London residence. This media zone in Canada Gate will host more than 40 stand-alone studios with full play-out facilities for broadcasters including the BBC, ABC, Sky News, NBC, CBS and Al Jazeera English.

It is just part of a network of locations including Westminster Abbey, the Mall and Trafalgar Square that are host to a raft of specially erected broadcast locations.


"It's our biggest international technical build-out ever," said Hampson, who added that NBC and its sister networks including MSNBC and Telemundo, E! and Bravo began planning wedding coverage even before the royal engagement was announced in November. "We began to focus very early and had a team in London scouting locations and planning for months."


The result is a series of prime locations, including a prestige slot beneath Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square from which NBC will broadcast a special edition of Today on Friday kicking off at 4 am EST as well as four studios in the media village at Buckingham Palace.

It is also bringing over a host of anchors including Meredith Vieira, Matt Lauer, Natalie Morales and Al Roker.


NBC is far from alone in pulling out all the stops; ABC will have live coverage of the ceremony from London anchored by Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters, and the network will air a special edition of Good Morning America from London.


CBS is sending Katie Couric on what could be her swan song for the network. Couric will lead the main wedding coverage and anchor an hourlong news special at 8 p.m. Friday.


CNN will use its London squad as well getting as an insider's take from Piers Morgan, while Fox News is sending over around 50 staff including Shepard Smith and Martha Macullum.


Fox will piggyback on the feed from its sister U.K. network Sky News, which, like all the British broadcasters, is planning wall-to-wall coverage of the event.


Click here to read the entire article: The WEDDING

Friday, November 5, 2010

In NBC Interview, Bush Calls Kanye's On-Air Insult Worst Moment of Presidency



By Nate Freeman



In anticipation of the Nov. 9 release of his memoir Decision Points, George W. Bush will sit down with Matt Lauer for a prime-time news special this Monday to talk over the experiences relayed in the book. In the excerpts released yesterday in a press release, the NBC anchor grilled the ex-head of state on the memoir's key moments — namely 9/11, the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, etc.



But which of these events — all of them defining disasters of this millennium — does Bush consider the worst moment of his presidency? None, actually! It seems Bush is the latest victim of the cutting disses Kanye West can sneak into his nimble, dexterous flow. The offending quip, of course, was West's assertion, on an NBC Katrina telethon, that "George Bush doesn't care about black people." Bush admits that 'Ye burned him hard.



MATT LAUER:
This from the book. “Five years later I can barely write those words without feeling disgust.” You go on. “I faced a lot of criticism as President. I didn’t like hearing people claim that I lied about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction or cut taxes to benefit the rich. But the suggestion that I was racist because of the response to Katrina represented an all time low.”



PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH:
Yeah. I still feel that way as you read those words. I felt ‘em when I heard ‘em, felt ‘em when I wrote ‘em and I felt ‘em when I’m listening to ‘em.



Kanye has dealt with the haters before — diss tracks from the Dipset crew, Barack Obama calling him a "jackass" after he interrupted Taylor Swift — but nothing compared to the president calling his insult the lowest point of an eight-year tenure in the Oval Office. What's beef, W.?



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