Viewers tuning into NBC's 2024 election coverage on Nov. 5 could be forgiven for thinking the anchor desk was smack dab in the middle of New York's Rockefeller Plaza. On MSNBC, Steve Kornacki's “Big Board” might appear to be just feet away from a window opening onto the White House.
NBC and MSNBC's election coverage will come from 30 Rock, but from internal, not external studios. Instead, the company is leveraging advanced mixed reality technology to create the illusion of immersion, placing anchors on NBC in Rockefeller Plaza and on MSNBC outside the White House grounds, created with Epic Games' Unreal Engine.
The end result is dramatic, with the 69 floors of 30 Rock appearing to loom over the anchors of NBC's coverage (with data and graphics “projected” onto the side of the virtual building), and the White House just steps away from Kornacki's large billboard .
Watch NBC's virtual set here:
And MSNBC is set here:
On a tour of 30 Rock studios earlier this week, Marc Greenstein, senior vice president of design and production for NBC News and MSNBC, walked The Hollywood journalist through the company's technology plans, adding that while he was “a little nervous” with some of the technology aspects, he's “happy” with how things are going.
“That's what we have and what everyone else does, is our home field advantage, right? We have Rockefeller Center,” Greenstein says. “So we think it's really cool, obviously, just as a backdrop for the sense of place. It's giving us the ability to tell stories in this really dynamic way and, through technology, expand what is a physically difficult space to work in.”
Indeed, Rockefeller Plaza, despite its storied history, can be a difficult building to broadcast from. The largest studio in the building, Studio 8H (long home to Saturday Night Live) is small compared to many studios in Los Angeles, for example.
“It's a building built for radio, right in the middle of the Depression. They built it for radio and then said, 'hey, let's make a TV studio,'” Greenstein says. “We wouldn't trade it for the world. We love 30 Rock, but how can we still get some of that magic of being in a big studio, and more importantly its aesthetic: how can we use it as a canvas for all of our storytelling? Because this is an evening all about data.”
For viewers of NBC and MSNBC's coverage, the data will be the star of the show, and so the technology and design elements – while there are many bells and whistles – are all meant to serve this larger goal.
In the case of the MSNBC studio, this means that the anchor station, where Rachel Maddow and the anchor team will be seated, can clearly see Steve Kornacki and his scoreboard (interested viewers can also check out a “Kornacki Cam” on Peacock with uninterrupted video from the data guru The camera is actually a GoPro, attached to Kornacki's desk via a suction cup). This could speak to conversations or analytics based on what they are seeing.
On NBC, while viewers will see Rockefeller Plaza behind the ductwork, the studio is actually located right in the newsroom, with Tom Llamas' big scoreboard just a few feet away (as on MSNBC, Lester Holt and Savannah Guthrie will be able to see what the treats) watching) and the editorial staff directly adjacent to the set.
“The big editorial mission was to do our broadcast from the heart of the newsroom, that is, from all the journalists in the newsroom who might not necessarily be there [on set]we have direct access to them from the actual set,” says Greenstein. “Rather than having this sterile environment where the anchors would sit and then the reporters would spread out, we wanted the ability to move between that set and get to a reporter immediately.”
In the control room, Greenstein directed a camera operator to demonstrate the shot, moving from the dramatic virtual backdrop to the real-world newsroom, zooming in on a chair and desk that, on Tuesday, will be where Chuck Todd will be sitting.
“We could literally press a button and turn on the lights, bring the camera there,” he says. “Lester and Savannah might also come up and talk to them. That's what we think will be really dynamic in this space, is that we can go directly from the anchor station to the reporters in the newsroom, or bring them directly to the desk without big choreography or phone calls.
But more than anything, NBC's technology efforts are about data transparency, especially given the 2020 election, where the timing of some calls has sparked confusion.
“I think in any election you always start with the data,” Greenstein says. “How do we make sure that the viewer can see the data, see the vote as it comes in, and make sure that we show it in a way that is understandable and as transparent as possible, especially in an election like this. So we started from there and that led us to discover what are the different ways we could visualize the data.”
This is where Big Boards come in. Their placement on the sets is intended to put the data (and their avatars in the form of Kornacki and Llamas) at the center of the action.