‘THE NBC Nightly News” has a new feature – viewer e-mail.
At least three times in the past few weeks – most recently on Wednesday – anchorman Brian Williams has concluded the newscast by reading a handful of e-mails from readers.
He even read one e-mail from a viewer who complained about his choice of wardrobe, which the viewer compared unfavorably to the clothes worn by ABC News anchor Charles Gibson.
“Well, sir,” Williams replied on-air, “you may force me to call that nice fellow over there at ABC to see where he buys his stuff.” The e-mail segment is not a regular feature and will only be seen occasionally when time permits, which isn’t often, said John Reiss, executive producer of the Williams newscast.
But it does represent a stepped-up effort on the part of NBC News – along with its counterparts at competitors CBS and ABC – to humanize their news anchors and newscasts through increased interaction with viewers.
The effort is also taking the form of blogs posted on their Web sites. Williams writes one and incoming CBS anchor Katie Couric is planning to write one, too. At ABC News, Gibson does not yet write his own regular blog, although the news division does maintain a blog to which many of its correspondents contribute, including Gibson.
In addition, the newly reconstituted “CBS Evening News with Katie Couric” – set to debut Sept. 5 – will give some viewers the opportunity to speak out on the broadcast in a new series of guest commentaries titled “Free Speech,” CBS News announced last week.
“I think overall, between Brian’s blogging and the emails, we’re trying to lift the veil a bit,” Reiss said. “You’ve heard [news anchors in the past being referred to as] ‘the voice of God,’ and we are definitely trying to get away from that to a certain degree. And one way to do that is to be a bit more interactive.” At ABC, “World News” executive producer Jon Banner acknowledged the importance of interactivity and noted that every effort is made to reply to viewers who send e-mails to abcnews.com with questions.
But he said Gibson won’t be reading e-mails during the broadcast.
“We have a very limited amount of time to provide context and analysis and provide a clear picture of what happened that day,” Banner said.
As for Gibson authoring a daily blog in the manner of Couric and Williams, Banner said there are no such plans in the works. “I think we’re comfortable for the moment,” he said, “and I think we have a number of avenues to communicate with our audience.”