Living in Glass Houses

By James Poniewozik

If the Statue of Liberty were being designed today, she'd have a video camera instead of a torch. And she would welcome them all to Manhattan--the huddled, sign-hoisting, body-painted masses yearning to be filmed. At the crack of dawn, they're at Rockefeller Plaza, peering into the NBC Today show's glass-walled studios, pestering Al Roker for a chance to say hi to Aunt Connie in Flat Rock. By afternoon, they're choking Times Square sidewalks outside MTV's fishbowl studio in hopes of getting into a crowd shot on Total Request Live. At various other times, they might hit either site for an open-air concert. Since Today's set went transparent in 1994, getting on TV has become as quintessential a New York City tourist experience as eating a pastrami sandwich the size of your suitcase.

And soon--thanks in no small part to the splashy showings of MTV and especially Today--new fishbowls for ABC and CBS's morning shows will join these, as well as Fox News' existing one on 48th Street. Next week ABC's Good Morning America begins broadcasting from a two-story, 46,750-sq.-ft. glass studio a quick jaywalk from MTV's. CBS launches its high-tech, estimated $30 million crystal ship along with the Early Show with Bryant Gumbel on Nov. 1.

Clearly--so to speak--ABC and CBS are sniffing after Today's morning dominance, achieved dramatically after its see-through set debuted, and will likewise aim to capture street ambience and interact with viewers. But each set will offer a different aspect of the city's personality: NBC's, the Art Deco cool of Rockefeller Center; ABC's, the neon bustle of Times Square; CBS's, the fairy-tale vista of Central Park and the Plaza Hotel. "The idea of doing Christmas in New York City in the millennium year" from the site, gushes Early Show senior executive producer Steve Friedman, "is amazing." Meanwhile, GMA executive producer Shelley Ross praises her show's Broadway perch as "the crossroads of the world."

The studios have achieved p.r. symbiosis with a newly sanitized New York City, the family-friendly Big Candy Apple--imagine Charles Gibson and Diane Sawyer as hosts of GMA from Times Square's porno paradise of a few years ago--and despite its already jammed sidewalks, the city has welcomed the cameras (the networks provide security to help control crowds). Friedman, who conceived Today's studio when he was its executive producer, even gives the show partial credit for the city's image turnaround, and his successor, Jeff Zucker, calls it "probably the best daily advertisement for the city." But now that imitators are jumping in, NBC of course downplays the importance of the set. "Everyone can build a studio. Not everyone can have Katie [Couric] and Matt [Lauer]," Zucker sniffs. "The studio isn't what brings people."

Yeah, but the live satellite feed doesn't hurt either. The cameo-in-every-pot strategy makes for what Friedman calls "retail television," forging bonds with camera hounds on site and viewers at home, who, the idea goes, warm to a network they see as embracing folks like themselves. Though some fans have to resort to ruses to win that embrace, as when two men snookered NBC into airing a kiss between them after luring cameras with a sign reading WILL U MARRY ME JILL?

Perhaps with such impromptus in mind, CBS will use glass that can instantly turn opaque. ABC, says Ross, will have its newsroom on the second floor to avoid "signs in the window or donkey ears on the weatherman." But if there's risk in going au naturel, it's a necessary one. The fishbowl studio had its original incarnation on Today in the 1950s, but today's versions are no retro gimmick; they're a sign that in the era of talk radio and Webcams, shows must increasingly share power with viewers, offering participation and interactivity. (MTV is the most extreme and savvy example, interrupting videos with a blitz of e-mail messages from viewers and taped fan interviews.) In the established broadcast paradigm, authorities dispensed news or coffee chat from enclosed strongholds. Now traditional media are adapting to the scary new-media age, using their glass houses, in a way, to become home pages for their audiences. Fox News', in fact, functions almost like a 24-hr. Internet camera, mostly eschewing spectacles to show a quiet workaday parade of double-parked vans and office grunts--step out for your morning coffee at the right moment and you're a star. It's strangely soothing, like a human aquarium.

None of this, though, is like the faux living-room and rec-room sets that have been the norm--the designs for CBS's jewel box, still under feverish construction, look more like the bridge of a really cheerful star cruiser. To media-savvy audiences, the illusion of having tea in some millionaire anchor's parlor is hokey. They want to see television when they turn on the TV. "People know that you're making a television show," says MTV executive vice president Dave Sirulnick. And thanks to these high-tech ant farms, now they can drop by to help.