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As I said before there’s a movable wall. Here’s the wall under while the studio was construction (photos by the great Dennis Degan)



In a comment Dennis guesses there’s about 12 feet from the glass door/Lester’s seat and the wall.

Thanks for the info, and you've anticipated my next question! Do the transitions back to scheduled programming vary locally then? I mean, are they typically quite smooth, (for example, into an ad break and back to the scheduled programme?) If syndicated programming has been showing, would it typically be restarted from where it was left off? What about overruns, can the inclusion of a special report end up making an affiliate run late for the rest of the day, or until a local live programme can shrink the overrun? or could a couple of ad breaks be cut out, given there are so many compared to what we're used to?

Typically if it occurs during the dayside (either local or network) they will JIP (join in progress) so they could join back either during a break or the program. Locally in Baltimore I’ve never seen a station pause local or syndicated programming and restart when a special report ends (I don’t think it’s a common practice or if its done at all). I’m sure if they wanted to they could but it would likely eat up their local news time for the schedule to reset.

Some stations may have an image of their logo with a voice over saying “we now return to your regularly scheduled programming” even after the network anchor may have done something similar.

In primetime it depends on the network, program being aired, and if it’s a new episode. If it’s a short Special Report and they paused programming and they over run to the late local by five minutes the local news will shrink time wise to reset the schedule so late night starts on time at 11:35. If it’s more than five minutes generally the local news will air in it’s entirety and late night will slide. Also during primetime the network will likely delete non program/non commercial elements such as promos to prevent network over run.

And if it’s a new episode in the eastern/central time zones where a special report took up most of the time and wasn’t paused the mountain and western time zones will get a repeat. Pushing that episode back a week. This is also done in sports - one time sports on CBS over ran by over 90 minutes - there by making the local time to start at 12:30 am they will completely remove the show from the eastern schedule and run a repeat for western viewers.

If it’s a program that’s low rated and even if it’s a new episode they may JIP it no matter how far in they are. Like after hockey ran long and NBC joined The Island something like 30 minutes in progress.



Edit : While not technically a special report CBS had a 30 minute show scheduled after the State of the Union address. As usual the address, the the opposition response and analysis ran long. Their coverage ran long and ended at a ridiculous time like 10:47 or 10:50 and they decided to play out the show which was a rerun. It pushed local news and late night back. I’m sure they could have found Senators or Representatives to fill the ten minutes of time.

Here’s a good video showing the resolution of MSNBC’s video walls. Here it is listing over 400 people or organizations President Trump has attacked since taking office.

pic.twitter.com/MXkti2JXf8

— Deadline White House (@DeadlineWH) March 27, 2018

I also feel like special reports used to be much more rare, but recently nearly all of the networks have done at least one a week in recent months. Primetime special reports are certainly much more uncommon. Networks don't want to dump out of primetime programming, and there isn't much breaking news at that hour anyway. Most of the special reports tend to be during the day when it's crashing into network programming or when affiliates are on their own time and can take the report if they choose. I would also say that most of the time, stations will join in progress after them. The only time programming routinely slides is for sports (though not always).

These are all of the special reports offered in the last two weeks that I can think of:

March for our Lives protest (March 24)
Trump signs spending bill funding government through September (March 23)
Dow drops 700 points in one day (March 22)
Trump announces new tariffs on Chinese goods (March 22)
Maryland school shooting (March 20)
Florida bridge collapse (March 15)
Student Walkout Day (March 14)

There has not been one this week so far, though it has been a relatively calm week in the Trump White House so far.

Primetime special reports are likely to occur during commercials where promos are to go or they run a crawl.

Heh, so someone somewhere may always miss a round of Wheel of Fortune as a result! I jest, but thanks for the insight everyone. It's one of the few things that are handled quite differently in our different countries, due to the different business structures/models.

Stations get a ton of calls when ever someone’s soap opera is preempted.

Now during some extra long special reports networks may do “hiccups” where they say something like “for some of you you will be leaving our coverage while for the rest coverage continues”. Then there’s about ten seconds of silence and the report will continue. They usually do it at the TOTH or BOTH and at times where local news may be such as 12pm or 5pm.

So far this week I don’t think there have been any.

Can someone answer this for me? What feed of NBC does CNBC Europe get from the states?

Reason I ask is whoever was at the controls tonight during the Nightly News let part of an ad slip out towards the end and after the broadcast a trailer for prime time was broadcast for about 7-8 seconds... just curious.

I don’t know if CNBC Europe takes Nightly direct from the east coast NBC feed. But if a trailer played out for primetime (after the “more Americans watch...” bumper makes it sounds like it came from the NBC master control and the CNBC master control didn’t cover up.

Edit: The online schedule for me seems odd - maybe because I chose the Hotbird satellite. Some days they have the Tonight Show at 2330 CET (same as UK time now) while other days they have Nightly News airing at the same time as it airs live on the east coast while other days it airs after an hour of Fallon.

Edit 2: Think I found the UK Schedule via TVGuide.co.uk that appears to have Nightly News consistently at 2330 - same as the first airing. So I’m assuming the CNBC Master Control operater was asleep at the wheel.

CNBC Europe, and before that NBC Super Channel, have always taken a live east coast feed for NBC Nightly News, and at one time, for Today as well. I imagine they get the network feed, like most affiliates do.

Pretty much all of the ad time in Nightly News is network-filled anyway. There are only one or two 30 second local slots and a 15 second news tease in the entire 30 minute block, so it would be hard to figure out where the feed is coming from.