TVSpy
It turns out that the recent romantic comedy “Morning Glory” is just one instance of TV news’ increasingly cozy relationship with Hollywood. The comedy, which opened on November 10th, skewers the behind-the-scenes culture of a network morning show and includes cameos from Bob Schieffer, Morley Safer, and Chris Matthews. It also includes a performance from WUSA‘s morning co-anchor Mike Hydeck.
Although the movie opened to a middlng reviews and proved to be a mediocre box office draw, the current connection between Hollywood and broadcast news is still very strong. As The Washington Post recently pointed out, many news outlets are ignoring past fears of embarrassment and seeing the benefits of an anchor’s appearance on the big screen. “The rules seem to be loosening up,” WaPo’s Reliable Source observes, “at a time when TV networks and film studios share corporate overlords and news organizations are more willing to promote their journalists as personalities.”
If nothing else, though, Hollywood’s current focus on TV news–with veteran journalist Christiane Amanpour appearing in “Iron Man 2” and WJLA‘s Rebecca Cooper set to appear in the upcoming “Transformers 3”–provides fodder for newsroom watercooler conversations around the country. KPTV’s veteran morning anchor Pete Ferryman told The Oregonian that he found aspects of “Morning Glory” familiar but he added “I cringed at some of the things.”