How NBC News’ Quibi Show ‘The Report’ Launched With iPads in Anchors’ Homes Instead of Custom-Built Studio
Somewhere in 30 Rockefeller Center, there’s a custom-built studio that hasn’t ever been used — yet. The show it was made for, NBC News’ Quibi collaboration “The Report,” launched yesterday with its anchors and producers at home, like most Americans during the coronavirus crisis.
The new studio has “green screens and could accommodate a lot of technology and sort of very complicated graphics and explainers that we were going to provide,” executive producer Madeleine Haeringer told TheWrap Tuesday, though she didn’t dwell on it: “You know, it’s important to get this information out now and to be recording right now and if we’ve got to do it with an iPad, we’ll do it with the iPad.”
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That’s what they did. Anchor Michelle Fisher began the first-ever “Morning Report” Monday* *by announcing, “Here at the ‘Morning Report,’ it’s our mission to help you get up to speed on the day’s most important stories. For now, like a lot of you, our team is working from our living rooms but, like you, we’re making the most of it and we’re ready to bring you the news.”
When Fisher said “we,” she was referring to a team of 50-plus people, many of whom were hired just to be part of “The Report,” which airs Morning, Evening, Saturday and Sunday episodes. Haeringer noted she was “incredibly proud of this team, some of whom just got their NBC logins a couple of weeks ago.”
In a memo to NBC News staff Monday morning, NBC News President Noah Oppenheim said the same: “Launching a daily news program for a brand new format that uses entirely new technology would be challenging under the best of circumstances. The fact that Madeleine Haeringer and her team have done just that–all while pivoting to remote work and navigating our upended world–is a truly incredible feat.”
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