Inside CNN’s ‘The Situation Room’

Feist, sitting in one of two control rooms needed for “The Situation Room,” wants to get Harman’s release on the air immediately and tells host Wolf Blitzer. Blitzer is in the studio down the hallway, sitting at his laptop in a corner of the set and checking e-mail and breaking news. After hearing Feist’s pitch through his ear piece, Blitzer concurs and says that they should push back the next planned story coming out of the break in order to make room for the Harman release.

But not everyone in the control is convinced that this merits the buzz Feist and Blitzer are giving it.

Someone calls out, “Why are we making such a big deal out of Harman?”

Another: “Feinstein and others have been saying this sort of thing all day long.”

Feist pauses for two seconds — a rare luxury in the warp-speed environment that “The Situation Room” is created in — and re-queries Blitzer.

“Are we sure we want to go with this? Some are wondering if Harman’s saying anything new here.”

Twenty seconds until airtime.

“Absolutely, Sam” Blitzer says. “She’s the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.”

Feist is creating a whirlwind of commotion all over his computer screen, clicking and dragging and cutting and pasting and typing in order to rearrange the lineup and turn Harman’s release into broadcast material.

Above and in front of Feist are hundreds of television screens channeling news feeds from around the world. Clocks and timers are everywhere.

Ten seconds.

Director Howie Lutt snaps production commands into his headset and punches the air like a symphony conductor possessed — ” Roll B! Put it in! Stand by A … Roll B!” — until Blitzer re-emerges on screen after the break.

(On air) “And we’re just getting this in — our lead story. A statement from the ranking Democrat of the House Intelligence Committee, Jane Harman of California…”

The newsroom breaths a bit more easy, having just turned a press release into on-air material in the space of a few minutes. But such is life in “The Situation Room” — the furthest thing possible from your daddy’s news show.

Even for those who may still wax nostalgic for the old Cronkitean way of doing the news — an anchor behind a desk reading a teleprompter or throwing to a packaged news segment or reporter — you have to give credit to a news show whose format actually requires the anchor — Wolf Blitzer, in this case — to bolster his fitness regimen in order to keep up with the demands of a live, three-hour show.

“I spend an hour on the treadmill every morning to get in shape,” Blitzer admits. “It does take a lot out of you.” For the three-hour show (it airs at 4, 5 and 7 p.m.) Blitzer and nearly all of his guests remain standing. Pacing, even.

“The Situation Room,” which debuted on CNN last August, is an impressive technical feat and, in many ways, it’s television for the ADD set. There’s the giant screen behind Blitzer that frequently gets chopped into six separate windows broadcasting different feeds. There’s the fancy graphic designs. Cameramen take MTV-like tracking shots of the studio’s monitors. Blitzer pans to correspondents all around the world with wizard-like speed. There’s an “Inside the Blogs” feature. Jack Cafferty asks a “Question of the Day” and reads viewer e-mail. Clocks let you know what time it is all over the world. There are polls and data feeds and real time video and, of course, the ever-present ticker along the bottom of your television screen. The fast pace is intentional and meant to make the show feel “fast” and “developing” and “happening now.” It may very well not be a coincidence that, during The Examiner’s visit, Floor Manager Chris Carter wore a Tommy Armour athletic shirt designed to wick sweat away from one’s body.

This whole technical circus may be sensory overload for some, but it’s an intentional attempt to bring cable news into the age of the Internet. “The Situation Room” is custom-built for raw, breaking news and they intentionally shun falling into a regimented format from day to day.

“Times have changed,” Blitzer says. “There are new capabilities and video technologies and, especially with computers and the Internet, there was a sense that viewers are capable of digesting more than one image at a time.”

The inspiration for “The Situation Room” came to Blitzer, Feist and CNN’s Washington Bureau Chief David Bohrman following the 2004 Election Night. Blitzer led CNN’s coverage and, as they featured continuous reports from correspondents around the country, information, updates and video feeds filtered into CNN at a rapid clip. Still, it was frustrating to both Bohrman and Feist that so much great satellite footage from affiliates went unused.

“David and Sam wondered how can we could convey CNN’s unbelievable reach and our hundreds of affiliates and video and satellites,” Blitzer explained. “How do we get all of that material — more graphically and vividly — to our viewers so they can see this enormous power that we have?”

Although “The Situation Room” still trails cable ratings giant Fox News Channel, their audience is improving and they have, on rare occasions, bested Fox during the 5 and 6 p.m. timeslots in the coveted 25-54 year old demographic.

The future success of “The Situation Room” seems to hinge on two primary factors. First, their eagerness to get the latest news on the air before anybody else has the potential to present problems, such as broadcasting incorrect information. Surprisingly, that has happened far less often than you might suspect during “The Situation Room’s” ten month run, but the potential for a major gaffe always lurks around the corner (after one segment I witnessed, Blitzer had to ask his producers, “Did I pronounce that congressman’s name correctly?”).

Blitzer thinks that the best buffer against faulty reporting is a good staff. “The staff we’ve put together behind the scenes is amongst the best in television news and everybody screens stuff,” Blitzer says. “The front man is the guy who’s seen on television. I have a lot of stake — my credibility, my reputation — and I have to rely on these people. If they tell me it’s good to go, I can’t start arguing and asking, ‘How do you know?’ I need to know they’re not going to screw me.”

The otherpotential pitfall for “The Situation Room”’s approach is that the need for speed could cause them to follow the frivolous. Since they need to fill three hours of air time everyday, will they cut to a forest fire simply because it’s breaking and they have video? Does their system run the risk of choosing triviality over depth?

Perhaps “The Situation Room”’s need for speed was most acutely seen when, during President Bush’s May 15 primetime speech on immigration reform, they prematurely cut to a live video of President Bush reciting a few lines from his speech. The fault wasn’t theirs (Bush was cued early by a NBC stage manager) but “The Situation Room” managed to turn lemons into lemonades, using the goof as a way to prove just how “happening now” they really are. They later issued a statement saying:

“NBC stage manager has now admitted he cued the president early and CNN was the only network ready to go.”

Maybe even too eager to go live? That may prove to be the ultimate question for “The Situation Room.”

Patrick W. Gavin is The Examiner’s associate editorial page editor. You can e-mail him at [email protected]