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      For Times Reporters Appearing on TV, Extra Prep Time Helps

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      Appearing on TV news shows lets Times reporters take their work to a wider audience. But the opportunities must be handled with care.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.“What do you think?”The host looks to you. Hundreds of thousands — even millions — of television viewers await your answer. What do you say?Annie Karni, a White House correspondent for The New York Times who is a regular guest on MSNBC, said she has been asked some version of that question often during her TV news show appearances over the past few years.“You’re there to talk about your reporting, even if the host is pushing you to offer an opinion,” she said.Ms. Karni is one of approximately 20 Times reporters who make regular appearances on television networks like CNN, CBS and MSNBC. Although most appearances are unpaid unless a journalist has signed a contract with a network, Ms. Karni and others see substantial pluses in the appearances.“Sources in Washington watch, and maybe someone starts to recognize you more and is more likely to return your call on your next story,” she said.“It’s also another way to bring the work of The Times to people watching a program who might otherwise not have seen it,” said Zolan Kanno-Youngs, a White House correspondent for The Times and a CNN contributor.Reporters are generally asked to appear on a show a few hours in advance, Ms. Karni said. They are given topics of discussion, along with any relevant articles to read, though producers do not supply precise questions.Before an appearance, Ms. Karni said she sometimes makes extra calls to her sources to get additional context.Katie Benner, who covers the Justice Department for The Times and recently signed on as a contributor at MSNBC, said she makes an extra effort to consider how to contextualize any topic she discusses for an audience that may be unfamiliar with it.“If there’s a major shooting and the Justice Department has deemed it a possible hate crime, the public should probably know what constitutes a hate crime,” she said. “Are they on the rise? Are we seeing a trend? If someone else addresses that, great. If not, I want to make sure it’s said.”Ms. Karni said the best way for reporters to learn how to present their work for a television audience is simply to do it repeatedly, but first-time guests aren’t completely on their own. The Times’s communications department offers media training for its reporters, which can include mock interviews. One thing that Ms. Karni said surprised her when she began appearing on TV was the streamlining and repetition necessary when summarizing reporting.“You want to come up with one or two things you want the audience to know and really emphasize those,” she said. “Even if it’s not the exact answer to the question you’re asked, it’s better than trying to think on your feet.”Even though a reporter may be on camera for only five minutes, the time required for TV appearances is hardly brief, Ms. Karni said. In addition to getting to and from the studio (during normal times, that is), reporters must catch up on all the news of the day, not just their specific stories. That can be the most difficult part, Ms. Karni said: the ability to pivot and to be prepared to speak on any pressing topic after a 15-minute cram session on the car ride over.But journalists have been appearing remotely since March 2020, which enables them to commit more like 10 minutes of their time rather than two hours. And reporters can make late-night appearances on shows like “Nightline” without worrying about catching a late car ride home.“It’s been a totally new world since the pandemic,” Ms. Karni said. “I bought a ring light for my bedroom, do my own makeup, and the whole thing is much quicker.”Ms. Benner agreed but said she missed one big perk: the hair and makeup team.“I normally don’t really wear any makeup, but they make you look amazing,” she said. “They’re also the funniest people and always make me laugh.”Mr. Kanno-Youngs, however, has become a little self-conscious about dialing in from his apartment. His dog stares at him from the couch, just waiting to bark; people tramp by in the hallway outside his door; and he ends up eyeing artwork in his background, wondering if it’s slanted.“That makes me nervous,” he said. “It’s like: ‘Geez, is this painting crooked in my background? Is Room Rater going to completely expose me because I didn’t wipe the kitchen counter?’”Aesthetics aside, Ms. Benner pointed out one critical rule to her appearances. “If, because of your schedule, you have to choose between reporting and being on TV, you should always choose reporting,” she said.But while Times journalists can spend months — or even years — reporting a single story, an appearance on a news show is, by comparison, over in a heartbeat.“There’s always a moment right after the host finishes and they go to the next guest,” Ms. Karni said. “You’re like, ‘Oh, wait, I have one more thing I want to say — come back!’” More

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      Discovery and AT&T: How a Huge Media Deal Was Done

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      An early-morning meeting at a Greenwich Village townhouse, under the watchful eye of Steve McQueen, was part of a monthslong campaign.In the predawn hours of April 1, David Zaslav, the chief executive of Discovery, arrived at a rented townhouse in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village — decorated with photos of rock stars and one of the actor Steve McQueen in sunglasses holding a gun — to prepare for a meeting that would soon reverberate across the American media industry. More

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      An Old-School Media Titan Pushes Aside an Upstart

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      LOS ANGELES — It’s the law of the Hollywood jungle. The biggest cats win.It was only last year that Jason Kilar, a digital media executive, was named the chief executive of WarnerMedia, a division of AT&T that includes HBO, Warner Bros. and CNN. In particular, AT&T wanted Mr. Kilar to turn an upstart streaming service, HBO Max, into a Netflix-style powerhouse. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Hemingway’ and ‘The People v. the Klan’

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      Lynn Novick and Ken Burns revisit the life of Ernest Hemingway on PBS. And a documentary about a civil suit against the Ku Klux Klan airs on CNN.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, April 5-11. Details and times are subject to change.MondayHEMINGWAY 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Lynn Novick and Ken Burns look back at the life of Ernest Hemingway in this new three-part documentary, which airs over three consecutive nights beginning on Monday. The program aims to give an evenhanded assessment of Hemingway’s life and legacy, recognizing the uglier elements (racism and anti-Semitism) while paying tribute to his work. The result is a documentary that is “cleareyed about its subject and emotional about his legacy,” James Poniewozik wrote in his review for The New York Times. “It celebrates his gifts, catalogs his flaws (which included using racist language in his correspondence) and chronicles his decline with the tragic relentlessness its subject would give to the death of a bull in the ring.”TuesdayFOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL (1994) 10 p.m. on TCM. The director Mike Newell and the screenwriter Richard Curtis worked together on this classic British romantic comedy, about two people (played by Hugh Grant and Andie MacDowell) whose love develops in fits and starts. It is, Janet Maslin wrote in her review for The Times, “elegant, festive and very, very funny.”WednesdayEXTERMINATE ALL THE BRUTES 9 p.m. on HBO. Raoul Peck (“I Am Not Your Negro”) blends archival footage, clips from Hollywood movies, scripted scenes and animation into a rumination on the history of European colonialism and American slavery in this new four-part series. The first two parts air on Wednesday at 9 p.m. and 10 p.m.; the second two air on Thursday night at the same times.ThursdayDiane Keaton and Al Pacino in “Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone.”Paramount PicturesMARIO PUZO’S THE GODFATHER, CODA: THE DEATH OF MICHAEL CORLEONE (1990) 6:45 p.m. on Showtime. Should “The Godfather, Coda,” be considered a 1990 release, or a 2020 one? It’s both, really. This re-edited version of the “The Godfather Part III,” released last year, is more than a standard extended director’s cut: Revisiting the film three decades after its original release, the director Francis Ford Coppola tweaked the opening. And the ending. And a lot of material in between, too. The changes are meant to sharpen a trilogy-capping movie that never managed the kind of acclaim that the original “Godfather” and “The Godfather Part II” did. Coppola had originally envisioned the film as “a summing-up and an interpretation of the first two movies, rather than a third movie,” he said in an interview with The Times last year. He had never wanted to use the “Part III” label in the first place. The title, he explained, “was the thread hanging out of the sock that annoyed me, so that led me to pull on the thread.”FridayDOING THE MOST WITH PHOEBE ROBINSON 11 p.m. on Comedy Central. The comedian Phoebe Robinson, known to many as one of the erstwhile co-hosts of the podcast “Two Dope Queens,” is on her own in hosting this new comedy series. Well, sort of: Each episode finds Robinson spending time with a different famous face. She goes horseback riding with the comic Whitney Cummings. She meets Kevin Bacon at a ropes course. The first season also includes appearances from the fashion designer Tan France, the model Ashley Graham, the comedian Hasan Minhaj, the actress Gabrielle Union and several other guests.AMERICAN MASTERS — OLIVER SACKS: HIS OWN LIFE (2021) 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Ken Burns and Lynn Novick are on PBS earlier this week with their new documentary, “Hemingway,” but on Friday night Burns’s younger brother, Ric Burns, gets a turn in the director’s chair. He’s the filmmaker behind this feature-length documentary, which profiles the neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks, whose many explorations of the mind turned him into a best-selling author. Burns explores the life of Sacks, who died in 2015 at 82, through a “deftly edited mix of archival footage, still imagery, talking-head interviews and in-the-moment narrative,” Glenn Kenny wrote in his review for The Times. Kenny added that, “while the movie steers around the details of how post-fame Sacks became something of a brand, it beautifully presents a portrait of his compassion and bravery.”SaturdaySidney Flanigan in “Never Rarely Sometimes Always.”Focus FeaturesNEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS (2020) 5:45 p.m. on HBO Signature. A young woman takes a long journey to get an abortion in this latest movie from the filmmaker Eliza Hittman. The story follows Autumn (Sidney Flanigan), a 17-year-old who gets on a bus to New York City after being told that she needs parental permission to obtain an abortion in her home state, Pennsylvania. She’s accompanied by a cousin, Skylar (Talia Ryder), who helps her jump over the many hurdles along the way. The result is a film that “tells a seldom-told story about abortion,” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The Times. It does so, Dargis added, “without cant, speeches, inflamed emotions and — most powerfully — without apology.” She included it on her list of the 10 best movies of 2020.SundayBeulah Mae Donald, as seen in “The People v. the Klan.”CNNTHE PEOPLE V. THE KLAN 9 p.m. on CNN. After her son Michael Donald was killed by the Ku Klux Klan in 1981, Beulah Mae Donald successfully sued the hate group for $7 million, in what became a groundbreaking case. Her push for justice is at the heart of this four-part documentary series, which looks back at work by civil rights activists to dismantle the Klan’s power in the 20th century. The program ties those activists’ work to modern movements for justice.2021 BAFTA AWARDS 8 p.m. on BBC America. Chloé Zhao’s Oscars front-runner, “Nomadland,” and the British coming-of-age film “Rocks,” from the filmmaker Sarah Gavron, are the two most-nominated films at this year’s EE British Academy Film Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Oscars. They lead a notably diverse slate of nominees, which comes after BAFTA’s voting rules were overhauled to address criticism of last year’s ceremony, when no people of color were nominated in the main acting categories and no women were nominated for best director. More

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      How the Networks Will Fill Airtime on a Quiet New Year’s Eve

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHow the Networks Will Fill Airtime on a Quiet New Year’s EveIn a typical year, shots of raucous parties from around the world dominate news programming. This year, the networks had to get more creative.Times Square will be emptier than usual for New Year’s Eve this year, but TV networks are doing their best to fill the gaps with extra live performances and creative thinking.Credit…Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesDec. 30, 2020[Follow our New Year’s Eve live coverageWhat becomes of Times Square when you take away hundreds of thousands of cheering, shivering New Year’s Eve revelers?It may no longer be the “biggest, most exciting New Year’s Eve party on Earth.” But it may still be the night’s biggest TV production set.For this year’s pandemic New Year’s Eve, many television traditions will be scrapped, including the scenes of raucous celebrations across the world and impromptu interviews with exuberant party goers at bars and clubs, eager to say hello to their mothers and grandmothers back home.Instead, networks are doubling down on the segments that they can safely pull off. They’ve increased the number of performers and interview guests, decreased the number of crew members and brainstormed creative — and socially distant — locations to send their reporters to. (Instead of reporting from a crowd of partyers, for example, one CNN correspondent will report from a crowd of puppies, which are not known to spread the coronavirus.)So while the type of people who enjoy cramming themselves into crowds of strangers to watch the ball drop may be disappointed this year, the type that prefers to curl up and celebrate from their sofas will find their tradition largely intact.“In some respects it’s going to feel very similar to previous years,” said Meredith McGinn, an executive producer of NBC’s New Year’s Eve program, which is hosted by Carson Daly. “You will see the same confetti fly at midnight; you will see the ball drop.”But, like most things in 2020, there were some necessary adjustments.“Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” on ABC will send Ryan Seacrest roaming around a much emptier Times Square with a camera crew in tow — wearing a mask except when standing in designated areas. And CNN’s hosts, Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen, will reunite in Times Square for an evening of interviews and cheeky ad-libbing. (The hosts are close friends who have been in each other’s social “bubbles” during the pandemic.)This year, the Times Square camera crews and riggings are confined to a space between 45th and 47th Streets. It usually stretches from 41st to 59th.Credit…Carlo Allegri/ReutersIn a typical year, Cooper and Cohen invite interview guests up to their riser overlooking the crowds; this year, the network will superimpose images of the guests’ full bodies beside the hosts in a technique that they will jokingly call “teleportation.” On NBC, rather than cutting to raging parties, the network will broadcast small family gatherings from inside their homes. Even the Times Square production set is smaller: While it typically stretches from 41st Street to 59th Street; this year it is limited to a space between 45th Street and 47th Street.“We had to reinvent Times Square,” said Jeff Straus, the president of Countdown Entertainment, which co-produces the event with Times Square Alliance. He described the set up as a theater in the round, with two stages at the center. Three huge screens will provide close-ups of what’s happening onstage for the small number of guests.Emergency medical workers, frontline workers and essential workers were invited to bring their families to sit in specially designated areas in Times Square and watch the array of performances. In total, somewhere between 100 and 160 guests are expected to be present for the 11 scheduled musical acts, including a seven-minute show by Jennifer Lopez leading up to the final countdown. Those guests will be the subjects of the on-camera interviews, rather than the partyers among dense crowds of people, some of whom wait in Times Square for a dozen or more hours to ensure good spots.To pull off the broadcast, networks must follow state guidelines on pandemic television production, as well as protocols set by the various unions representing the crews and performers. They’ve devised plans for testing production staffers for Covid-19 before New Year’s Eve and for feeding production staffers without letting them get too close to one another. (NBC rented additional space in Times Square to make sure crew members could eat and maintain proper distance.)On Thursday, network employees will work from separate locations when possible. The director of “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve,” Glenn Weiss, is overseeing the broadcast from his office on 46th Street instead of in the “Good Morning America” studio at Broadway and 44th Street. And NBC cameras are stationed on the third floor of the Renaissance New York Times Square Hotel, where the network had to remove some of the hotel’s windows so that bird’s-eye-views of the event would not be hindered by glare.All of the acts at Times Square will be live, including performances by Lopez, Gloria Gaynor, Billy Porter, Cyndi Lauper and Pitbull. Many other performances will occur on stages outside of New York — including those by Brandy, Megan Thee Stallion and Miley Cyrus, all from Los Angeles, for ABC.The networks have lined up more pretaped material than usual, however. (Most have not said which of the performances were filmed in advance.)Highlights of PBS’s prerecorded New Year’s Eve programming include an opening performance of “Lady Marmalade” by Patti LaBelle.Credit…Dan Chung/Mount Vernon Ladies’ AssociationOn PBS, a New Year’s Eve program, called “United in Song,” was filmed in November at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and in September at George Washington’s Virginia estate in Mount Vernon, where about 120 audience members watched from a distance and masked violinists were separated from unmasked brass players with plexiglass. NBC is showing a new Blake Shelton music video. Spectrum News NY1 will roll a highlight reel of its reporter Dean Meminger’s flashy New Year’s Eve suits over the years.And networks are getting creative in other ways to fill the holes formerly filled by crowd shots and partyers. CNN will have one correspondent getting a tattoo, another skiing down an Oregon slope wearing a GoPro and an appearance from Carole Baskin of “Tiger King” fame.With the pandemic driving people away from bars and restaurants and toward their living rooms, executives say it’s possible that there will be more viewers than ever before. ABC, which tends to have the highest viewership on the holiday, peaked last year at about 21 million viewers, according to news reports.“I can never predict what the Nielsen gods will bring,” said Mark Bracco, an executive producer on ABC’s program, “but we’re hopeful that most Americans will be home on their couches.”In a year in which more than 338,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus, viewers may notice a tonal shift compared with the goofy — and sometimes tipsy — coverage of years past. The Champagne popping and 2021 eyeglasses will be interspersed with appreciations of health care workers and emergency medical workers, as well as reflections on the lives lost and the economic hardship.On ABC, Seacrest will interview President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his wife, Jill Biden, a rare political interview of someone other than the New York City mayor.And on PBS, an opening performance of “Lady Marmalade” by Patti LaBelle in a gleaming white suit opens the hour-and-a-half program that includes more serious notes, including a monologue from the actress Audra McDonald about trailblazing women throughout history and from the playwright and actress Anna Deavere Smith about the history of the slave cemetery at Mount Vernon as she walks through those grounds. On CNN, John Mayer is slated to perform a tribute to lives lost this year out of Los Angeles.“We’re all going to be celebrating the end of this horrific year,” said Eric Hall, the executive producer of CNN’s program, “and we’re also going to be celebrating the beginning of what looks to be a hopeful year.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More