This morning we headed to NBC’s Nebraska Ave. headquarters here in Washington as NBC’s David Gregory, “Meet the Press” EP Betsy Fischer, NBC DC Bureau Chief Mark Whitaker, NBC News president Steve Capus and NBCU CEO Jeff Zucker greeted guests for brunch after the first broadcast in HD and from a new, large, modern studio for the #1 Sunday show.
Today’s roundtable guests, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D-MI), Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) and Gov. Bill Richardson (D-NM) stuck around for the festivities. (Gregory talked about the change at the end of the show. Here’s a clip.)
Gregory, who has been moderator of the show for 17 months, got choked up talking about what the new studio means for him personally and the legacy of longtime moderator Tim Russert who died almost two years ago. “This has not been an easy transition,” said Gregory, “but I’ve always felt like I’m never alone in that.”
Says Capus, “We talked about that the very first week after we lost Tim, about how we were going to go on and in what ways we were going to go on.”
Capus calls the new studio “a partnership with MSNBC and network news and WRC.
“This is the new era of NBC News,” Capus added.
The new studio was the brainchild of NBC News creative director Marc Greenstein. Here’s a video tour from earlier in the week. MTP’s move to HD means CBS’s “Face the Nation” is the last of the four broadcast public affairs programs in standard definition.