Tonight, one of the world’s most respected and leading newsmen Brian Williams launches new NBC prime-time evening news magazine ‘Rock Center with Brian Williams’ broadcasting live from Studio 3B in Rock Center every Monday night at 10p ET. Come February, it moves to another time slot yet to be determined because 10p is spoken for with new show ‘Smash’ starring Debra Messing.
He has recruited many Rock Center correspondents (hence the name) to help him bring us the “interesting stories” according to Brian, including Matt Lauer. Ann Curry, Natalie Morales, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, Richard Engel, Meredith Vieira. Others are Harry Smith, Kate Snow and someone you may have heard of, Ted Koppel.
Before even being asked some questions from us reporters on a conference call discussing the new show, classy Brian along with his superior staff Steve Capus: President NBC News, and Rome Hartman: Senior Executive Producer all addressed us first.
They discuss everything from their new Comcast bosses, show ratings, story-lines, Koppel and more. Read on.
Steve Capus: “This is the first time in nearly two decades that a news division has attempted to launch a new prime-time news magazine. We think that the time is right to do so. We think given everything that’s happening all around the world and in the United States that there is a need for another outlet for quality journalism and NBC News is uniquely situated to take on such an ambitious project. We would not have done this were it not for our great faith in none other than Brian Williams to be the host of this broadcast. Brian is somebody I’ve known for an awfully long time and I have absolute faith that he’s going to do a brilliant job in this. We will be on live.”
Rome Hartman: “It also brings an energy just the fact of being live and being live from a control room instead of put together in an edit room three days earlier brings an energy which I think is going to be palpable; I think people are going to feel it in the audience. That’s certainly our goal.”
Steve Capus: “This news division is in a unique place. I look around and see in the trades and everywhere I look articles about how news organizations are challenged on the business side, how people are closing operations, how they’re laying off people. We’re in a different mode and that’s – I think we can say that, you know, uniquely so. We’re growing at a time when the news operations are challenged. We are committed to staffing this the right way. We have bureaus all around the world who will contribute to this broadcast. And thanks to the considerable strength of this news division I feel great about how we will be – what we will be able to pull off.
In terms of what we’re going to do we know we’re not going to sit here and predict for you that we’re going to be a smash hit right out of the starting blocks. In fact I actually think it’s going to be the opposite; we’re not doing this as a ratings play. We’re doing this as an attempt to give NBC News a new outlet, an important outlet in prime-time.
But we know that the business is challenged right now and we’re not kidding ourselves; we know it’s going to take some time to get established.
Our marching orders from an incredibly supportive corporate suite here are very simple; get on, get established and do great work that we’re all proud of. Number 1, I like having that kind of support. Our new bosses that came from Comcast are very, very supportive. And they – we spoke in the very early days of their time here about doing just this broadcast. So they’re thrilled and we enjoy their considerable support. But we know that this is a long term proposition that we want to get on there and we want to establish this broadcast, make it part of American society and hopefully draw viewers along the way and deliver on the promises that we talk about today. So we’re very, very excited. “
Brian: “I’m in the terrific position of working with all the people you’ve heard from. To have Steve’s leadership and believe me he’s cleared the decks for whatever we have needed. I mentioned in a few other pieces the Comcast guys who came into this company and this was the first order of business and it was enormously flattering and just reassuring about their intention.
And to have Rome in the slot for this means that I can go off and do my day job; he has a kind of Sully-like calm about him and that’s a really good thing in his job. His main job has been hiring up and getting this staff up and running while, you know, the building of offices and cubicles for all these people goes on around them they’re all busy at television. I’ve used the expression before that you look around this news division suddenly and it’s Cooperstown.
And in a gender-neutral sense that’s really what we put together here. Finally to underscore what Steve has said, can’t say this often enough, no one has mentioned any kind of bracket for success or standards for that. All we’ve been told is to go do the broadcast we’d like to watch the broadcast we’ve always wanted to work on. There’s no benchmark, there’s no numbers, there’s no ratings it’s just we’re living in our hour.”
Now some questions:
How did you land Koppel?
Steve: “I, you know, like a lot of people Ted Koppel was interested in this when he heard that NBC News was creating this”.
“I think like a lot of other people in the industry, he thought the prospect of NBC News creating a prime-time news magazine led by Brian and with the stated ambition of doing original wide-ranging journalism there just aren’t many places where that kind of work is being done. And he was interested in playing a part in it. He’s not going to be an every week contributor; he’s a special correspondent. And we’re thrilled to have him. But I think he was interested in it for a lot of the same reasons that people within and outside NBC News are interested in it, producers, correspondents and observers, is that this is an exciting project and a lot of people are excited to be involved in it.
And he asked – it was a pretty short set of questions. He wanted to know what our commitment was to quality journalism and were we on board with him contributing to that effort.”
Brian: “And it’s been very exciting around here. We’re hiring people to put journalism on television. And you don’t get to start something like this more than once or twice in your lifetime. So I think to paraphrase what Rome and Steve have said I think Ted was drawn to that.”
Any interest in Dan Rather?
Brian: “I think Dan is under contract to HDNet”.
What gives you the sense that you can make a difference here with so many shows like Dateline that started out more serious and then kind of became the crime of the week, scandal of the week, celebrity death of the week shows?
Brian: “I’ll take a whack at this. We have a different charge. That’s never been part of our charge; it’s not why we were commissioned. And I just urge you to begin watching Halloween night and stay with us. Steve was right, our charge was to put together the best broadcast of its type we could, get on the air and stay there. And we’re going to do, you know, watch; we’re going to do interesting stories that are supremely unrelated to what you just mentioned.”
Busy Brian then left us just as classy as he joined us. “Not to interrupt this flow, I’ve got to go downstairs to Nightly.” That would be his other job ‘Nightly News with Brian Williams,’ the most watched evening newscast where he’s been bringing us the news every day since 2004.
Rock Center with Brian Williams, Live on Monday’s at 10p ET on NBC.