I'm So Excited About the Royal Wedding And Apparently Many American Networks Are, Too!! (747 hits)

As soon as the wedding date was set, “you would be shocked by how many e-mails we got from agents pitching their client as the royalty expert because they once saw Prince William, or once met Kate Middleton, or have once had dinner in the same restaurant,” said Rob Silverstein, executive producer of “Access Hollywood,” which is moving to London for a week.

Ms. Nachmanoff, the executive in charge of talent for NBC News, knew what she wanted: an eminent British historian; a tabloid editor with deep knowledge about the royal family; a person who played a part in Princess Diana’s wedding 30 years ago. And she knew that other television networks wanted the same. Because every network will be sharing the same camera feeds of the royal wedding on Friday morning, they have competed fiercely to sign up on-air talent in an attempt to make their hours and hours (and hours) of coverage stand out.

The most sought-after pundits have been signed to long-term contracts worth over $100,000; some even have deals with several outlets. The author of one book about the couple, Katie Nicholl, was the subject of a bidding war; she will be simultaneously working for ABC News, CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight” and the entertainment newsmagazine “Extra.”

The networks opened their wallets partly out of necessity: there is a long history in Britain of people being paid for interviews, and of giving short- and long-term contracts to experts is one way to meet that expectation. Fortunately, there is no shortage of talent to pick from in England, where reporting, gossiping and opining on the royal family is a full-blown industry.

But the costs have quickly added up for network news divisions, some still understaffed after years of cutbacks. Having sold special advertising packages for the event, networks are betting viewers are as interested in the wedding as their news anchors and producers evidently are.

As soon as the wedding date was set, “you would be shocked by how many e-mails we got from agents pitching their client as the royalty expert because they once saw Prince William, or once met Kate Middleton, or have once had dinner in the same restaurant,” said Rob Silverstein, executive producer of “Access Hollywood,” which is moving to London for a week. Hollywood agencies including WME, CAA and ICM not only pitched experts for the wedding day, they sold what were effectively packages of experts for the television documentaries that are leading up to the ceremony.

“As long as you have an English accent,” Mr. Silverstein joked, “you’ll work.”

The pitches have not stopped, said Brent Zacky, a vice president at TLC, recounting a New York agent who pitched a “wedding expert” to him just last week. “There’s last-minute jockeying going on,” he said, even for one-time guest appearances. The guest booking wars “have been ferocious,” said Piers Morgan, the CNN anchor.

Mr. Morgan, who is British, said what he wants out of his guests on “Piers Morgan Tonight,” his 9 p.m. show on CNN, are personal stories and anecdotes. He said he would be recalling a private lunch he had with Princess Diana and Prince William when the prince was 13 years old. Of the bookings, he said, “It’s less about A-list faces. It’s ‘Do they know the royals or not?’ ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/25/business...





Posted By: Jen Fad
Monday, April 25th 2011 at 10:29AM
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