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Nobody at CBS News New York?

Don CT

Don CT

Star Participant
When CBS broke in to announce the death of President George Bush they had to go out to the local news in LA. Does the New York bureau shut down on Friday night? Surprising as they have CBSN running 24/7.
 
Don CT said:
When CBS broke in to announce the death of President George Bush they had to go out to the local news in LA. Does the New York bureau shut down on Friday night? Surprising as they have CBSN running 24/7.
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Bush was 94, and had been in failing health for years. And given that it was announced an hour or so ago, I doubt that CBS has too many viewers at this hour (about 1 AM ET as I write this). There'll be plenty of coverage in the morning, and I'll bet CBSN is covering it live.
 
KeithE4 said:
Bush was 94, and had been in failing health for years. And given that it was announced an hour or so ago, I doubt that CBS has too many viewers at this hour (about 1 AM ET as I write this). There'll be plenty of coverage in the morning, and I'll bet CBSN is covering it live.
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The other networks broke in with anchors from New York, so they had on air anchors ready. I would think CBS could put an CBSN anchor on the network to make the announcement. To throw to a local CBS 2 anchor from LA seems strange for such big news.
 
NBC had Steve Kornacki from MSNBC, on last hour with the report. Chris Matthews called in to discuss the President's life. RIP, Bush 41.
 
Don CT said:
Surprising as they have CBSN running 24/7.
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And in fact, I'm watching CBSN right now, and they're running live coverage from KHOU in Houston. So yes, it appears that CBS News New York is not anchoring this coverage tonight, that it's instead being handled by CBS stations.
 
TheBigA said:
And in fact, I'm watching CBSN right now, and they're running live coverage from KHOU in Houston. So yes, it appears that CBS News New York is not anchoring this coverage tonight, that it's instead being handled by CBS stations.
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I assume they will call in the lead anchors for Saturday morning.
 
crainbebo said:
NBC had Steve Kornacki from MSNBC, on last hour with the report. Chris Matthews called in to discuss the President's life. RIP, Bush 41.
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Brian Williams had the night off, and he called in to thank Steve for taking on this task. Steve also took a call from Tom Brokaw. Steve anchored live coverage from NY for 3 hours on MSNBC, as well as the special reports for the broadcast network. Great job by a guy who isn't a traditional anchor.

At 2AM ET, the live coverage ended, and they ran a pre-recorded obit show, anchored by Lester Holt.
 
As I seem to recall, the night of Princess Diana's death, CBS had no staffing or coverage of its own into the morning hours, running Britain's ITV well into the early Sunday morning hours.
 
You would think all of the networks have a plan for round-the-clock coverage of news.

Maybe CBS simply decided to let the LA bureau handle the breaking news desk from 6pm PT (when the last feed of "CBS Evening News" ends) until midnight PT. By that time, staff should be arriving in New York for the CBS Morning News.
However, if that was the plan, you'd expect they would have a proper set with the wood tones and Eye Device desk to mimic New York.

I'm a little curious about NBC, too. If Steve Kornacki was the last man standing at 30 Rock last night, what was the plan if Pres. Bush's death had been announced just a couple of hours earlier? Rachel Maddow with a special report on NBC News? That seems ... awkward at best.
 
Looking a little more... CBS News was the first of the Big 3 networks to air a special report for the death of Pres. Bush, at 12:04am ET. So it's not like they were scrambling to find someone who could get in front of a camera.

Linda Lopez anchored on ABC from what looked like a vacant newsroom at ABC in New York.
 
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PTBoardOp94 said:
Looking a little more... CBS News was the first of the Big 3 networks to air a special report for the death of Pres. Bush, at 12:04am ET. So it's not like they were scrambling to find someone who could get in front of a camera.
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Keep in mind that the president is in Argentina, and the White House correspondent is with the president, and Argentina is 2 hours ahead, so it's 2:04 AM Argentina time. The news lid was on there. But normally, they would have gone to their White House reporter. They have several backups there, but when the president leaves town, those people are gone. The Washington bureau was closed. New York closed at midnight. A couple minutes later the bulletin comes in. CBSN is in overnight mode, which means it's not live. The only place they have a live anchor is in LA. They did the bulletin from there, and then switched to Houston where KHOU was doing some long form Bush programming. That's how they covered it on CBSN until 2AM ET, when they got a live anchor into NY to set up their pre-recorded obit material.
 
TheBigA said:
You're right, she clearly was stumbling through the script.
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She had that deer in the headlights look like they told her 20 seconds beforehand to get in the chair and be ready to go live the network is dark in New York.
 
Don CT said:
She had that deer in the headlights look like they told her 20 seconds beforehand to get in the chair and be ready to go live the network is dark in New York.
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How often does big news break after midnight on Friday night? The senior most experienced national anchor in the studio at the time was Don Lemon at CNN. He didn't look too comfortable either.
 
TheBigA said:
How often does big news break after midnight on Friday night? The senior most experienced national anchor in the studio at the time was Don Lemon at CNN. He didn't look too comfortable either.
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They also brought in the talking heads to help him out. Wolf was right there in the box a few minutes later.
 
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