NBC Anchor Broadens His Portfolio
By DAVID CARR
There is something disconcerting about seeing Brian Williams sitting in front of the television.At his apartment in New York last Thursday night, he fussed with the remote, scanned CNN and checked the local news, all while chatting about the fact that two weeks from Monday, NBC will add to the pile of television news with a one-hour show called “Rock Center With Brian Williams.” It may not knock “60 Minutes” off its perch, but NBC, now owned by Comcast, hopes it is good enough to one day be mentioned as a competitor.
Mr. Williams likes the idea of calling the show “Rock Center,” not only because it conjures the building he works in, but because it brings to mind “30 Rock.”
“People could tune in expecting to see Tina,” he said, referring to the sitcom’s star, Tina Fey. “I think the name confusion can only help us, right?”
Right.
“Rock Center With Brian Williams,” an attempt to spread his broadcast charisma over a newsmagazine show, is a smart but not sure bet for Comcast, which made the show a priority after buying the network in 2009 and getting government approval to buy NBC at the beginning of this year. True, “60 Minutes” is more venerable than vulnerable, but NBC, with the “Nightly News” hosted by Mr. Williams, “The Today Show” and “Meet the Press” — all No. 1 in their categories — has a lot of talent and muscle. So it is hard to go wrong adding shelf space in the form of a long-form news show.
The economics of even a lavishly produced news program (typically $250,000 to $300,000 an episode) are much tidier than a dramatic show ($3 million or more per episode). “Rock Center” is taking over a Monday night slot being vacated by the short-lived “Playboy Club” at 10 p.m.
The history of serious attempts at a newsmagazine is characterized by brave rhetoric followed by abundant carnage. Remember that “Dateline” and “48 Hours” rolled out with great fanfare before sliding into the slime of sexual predators and reheated celebrity tawdriness.
But NBC is not just dipping a toe in: “Rock Center” has hired 70 people at a time when other network news divisions continue to shrink, spending substantial money on talent in front of and behind the camera. And the executive producer, Rome Hartman, is a highly regarded veteran of both the BBC and “60 Minutes,” where he produced over 100 segments.
The correspondents include Harry Smith, Meredith Vieira, Kate Snow, Richard Engel and — as was just announced last week — Ted Koppel. They are backed by a group of hotshot producers, a few of them grabbed from “60 Minutes,” a notoriously difficult place for talent to rise because there is so much of it.
Those names and credentials have impressed people in the business, but the rest of us will be tuning in to see Mr. Williams.
Somewhere between the anchor chair and his funny turns with late-nighters like David Letterman and Jon Stewart, there is a runway for his brand of abnormal normalcy. He’s just like us, only better, or at least more famous.
I have heard people in Midwestern V.F.W.’s say nice things about him, but he also received favorable mention at a breakfast of digital media savants I recently attended. In a niched-up world, Mr. Williams is someone we all seem to hold in common, not because he is Uncle Walt, but because he reflects an appealing mash-up of earnestness and knowingness.
The first promo for the show is built on a friendly smirk at the trappings of network television. “I am sitting on the ‘NBC Nightly News’ set and behind us,” he says, with a jerk of the thumb, “is the set for ‘Rock Center.’ My life will basically take place in this room.” Scanning the place, he points to a corner. “There is a plan for a pasta bar back over there.”
The studio segments between stories will be live, which will provide a contrast to the carefully scripted interstitials on “60 Minutes.” But, more to the point, Mr. Williams prefers to work that way.
“When you see me on television, I am there, that is where I am,” he said, gesturing toward the glowing box on the wall of his apartment. “I am a creature of live television.”
Mr. Williams is adept at speaking to millions in real time. He has been the top-ranked anchor on the evening news since he took over the chair seven years ago. Some might suggest that’s like being the one-eyed king in the land of the blind given the entropic arc of network news. But he is winning, because he can credibly anchor a newscast amidst a revolution in Cairo, but also because he is enough of a regular guy to get away with calling Target “Tar-zhay” during the broadcast, as he did last week.
It is that wink, along with the impression that he actually knows his way around a Target store, that makes him appealing. He is like the local anchor that we love to watch, the funny one, the nice one, the handsome one, except he talks to almost eight million people every night about global and national matters.
He often acts as if his professional life accidentally ended up on steroids, that he has risen above his station, and pleads ignorance about the metrics that make him and his broadcast valuable.
“I have no idea what it costs to send a news truck to Dallas to feed live pictures on the ‘Nightly News,’ ” he said. “I don’t know what a commercial costs on our air. It is much better if I stay in my lane. They hire me to put word with pictures. And I like doing that very much.”
He swears he would happily go to work at NY1 if he got fired tomorrow. (In fact, during Hurricane Irene he sat in for an hour on WNBC, the local New York affiliate, just to give the anchors there a break.) Mr. Williams is talent, but he skews normal and is the kind of guy who would be happy working as a volunteer fireman, which he has, or the type who didn’t finish college because he got interested in other things, which he also did.
Because he is busy getting ready for the new show, and I am on deadline, we met at the Midtown apartment he shares with his wife, Jane, who covers education for Bloomberg Radio, and with his daughter, Allison, an actress who will soon appear on the HBO series “Girls.” As he speaks, the window behind him offers a nocturnal postcard of Manhattan, including Rockefeller Center, still marked with the initials of the now-minority owner, G.E.
Mr. Williams won’t say it directly, but the change in ownership, if not signage, has been a happy turn.
“I asked Jeff Zucker about doing something like this a few years ago,” he said, referring to the newsmagazine format, but the new owners, including Steve Burke and Brian Roberts, asked me. Right from the start, they said, ‘Let’s do this.’ ”
He interrupts our interview to switch to “NBC New York.” He is a freak about local news. He came from it, watches it and worries over it.
“I worked in local television for 12 years and that is our delivery system,” he said, “I want them to do well.”
Steve Capus, the president of NBC news, said Mr. Williams understood “the mood of the country and has a great understanding of the stories that will click.”
So Mr. Williams will wave his wand, and great stories will appear on command that will wow affiliates and their audiences?
“Um, not exactly,” he said. “I will write the words that you hear me speak, I will be doing some stories and interviews of my own, but you don’t want me selecting the pieces that will run. They would all be about presidential history, the Supreme Court, the military and aviation. No one would watch that show.”
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