The TV Watch
While British Hew to Tradition, Americans Want to Feel the Love
British coverage of the royal wedding emphasized tradition but American broadcasters focused more on the relationship between Prince William and Kate Middleton. Above, a British tourist watches the wedding in Times Square. More Photos »
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
Published: April 29, 2011
The kiss was really not much more than a peck.
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Prince William’s balcony clinch with his bride, Kate Middleton, was so quick and perfunctory that the CBS anchor Katie Couric missed it and asked for an instant replay. And another. “I hate to be ungrateful,” Ms. Couric said Friday morning. “But is that it?”
The “Today” show on NBC, which had rather crassly plastered a kiss countdown clock on the screen, was just as let down and replayed the royal smooch in gauzy slow motion. CNN’s Piers Morgan, who had predicted that the kiss would “go down in history as one of the great kisses,” had to eat crow when the disappointed crowds outside Buckingham Palace demanded a do-over. Mr. Morgan had to eat crow again after he assured his co-hosts, Anderson Cooper and the reality show host Cat Deeley, that Prince William would do no such thing. “You don’t understand the royals,” he said loftily, moments before the royal groom bent down for a second, but still far from ardent try. The BBC, on the other hand, was perfectly satisfied and had no complaints.
And more than anything else, those clashing kiss expectations are what separated British and American coverage of the royal wedding. On BBC America, which carried the live BBC feed, the anchor Huw Edwards emphasized tradition and continuity. American television craves change.
The embrace on the balcony was supposed to be passionate and juicy, a video confirmation of the narrative built into almost all the American coverage, namely that this royal union is a do-over for the one between Prince Charles and Diana Spencer in 1981 that was presented as a gossamer fairy tale and turned out to be a horror story.
This time, according to almost every anchor and commentator, it’s a real love match and this new couple are a much more amorous pair. Their first public embrace, which looked, as the Tudor historian David Starkey put it on CBS, like “an old married couple’s kiss” didn’t fit the scenario, however. For one thing, it wasn’t any more smoldering than the brief kiss Prince Charles gave his bride 30 years ago.
Barbara Walters on ABC supplied a better spin. “But you know they talk to each other, they laugh together, you feel the emotion between them,” she said. “And looking back at Princess Diana and Prince Charles, you did not feel that.”
ABC’s coverage evoked other royal memories as well. The network put Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters side by side in what looked like an anchor-booth version of the old Princess Diana and Camilla Parker-Bowles standoff. The two ABC stars co-anchored the event with the flinty smiles and clashing sensibilities of two women sharing the same man, or in this case rival super anchors sharing the same stage at what is sure to be one of the most highly rated ceremonies in television history.
The British public has softened on Ms. Parker-Bowles, Prince Charles’s former mistress, who is now the Duchess of Cornwall and his second wife. On ABC, the body language seemed stiffer.
“It is so great to spend this morning with you,” Ms. Sawyer gushed to Ms. Walters. “Glad we’re doing it together,” Ms. Walters said, more brusquely, before shifting to a solo. “This is the third royal wedding that I have covered, but I think this is the happiest.”
The BBC didn’t presume to look into the hearts of the royal couple. Mostly, Mr. Edwards and his colleagues provided historical background in the soft, deferential tone of commentators at a golf tournament. They didn’t get very excited about the bridal gown or the hats, though the eminent historian Simon Schama did have some thoughts about the wedding décor.
“Those trees in the abbey are of course an echo of gothic vaulting,” Mr. Schama said, noting that they brought to the majesty of Westminster Abbey “a fresh note of dazzling springtime.” (Hiring Mr. Schama as a wedding commentator is a bit like having William F. Buckley cover the red carpet on Oscar night.)
Americans tended to look past the pageantry, tradition and protocol for signs of the newlyweds’ true love — and other differences between this wedding and the other one.
On Fox News, Joan Lunden said she was struck by “watching William come in with his brother, casually walking over to the crowd and kissing people, saying hello.” Ms. Lunden, who covered Princess Diana’s wedding for ABC News, added, “You had none of that in 1981 with Charles as he came in. It was much more formal.”
And a lot of the commentary was less formal, as well, even after the royals began entering Westminster Abbey. When the Middletons walked in and greeted Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip, Ms. Couric cracked that the moment was “something out of ‘Meet the Fockers.’ ”
Insouciance can go too far, however. Ms. Couric, speaking off the cuff, reported that the stout, bald man walking into the abbey with a cane was Mohamed al-Fayed, noting that it was “pretty shocking” that Mr. Fayed, the father of Dodi, Princess Diana’s lover who died at her side in the 1997 car accident, was invited. And it would have been, because Mr. Fayed has long accused the royal family of plotting to assassinate his son and Princess Diana. Actually, it was someone else, who looked like Mr. Fayed. CBS corrected the mistake later in the broadcast.
Most anchors adhered tightly to a script that called for royal harmony and a happier-ever-after-ending.
On ABC, Tina Brown, the editor of The Daily Beast and Newsweek, who wrote a biography of Princess Diana, couldn’t stop praising the bride’s poise and aptitude for her new job, using the word “queenly” to describe the newly named Duchess of Cambridge.
“She’s got the Windsor polish, it’s all there,” Ms. Brown said. “She’s as regal as you can get and she’s new to this whole way of life.”
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