No More NBC Nightly News On CNBC Europe

Philip M. Stone April 27, 2010 Follow on Twitter

For expatriate Americans and for others staying up late who were into Americana, CNBC Europe had for many years the best daily American hour of TV starting at midnight CET with a half-hour commercial-free Tonight Show with Jay Leno followed by the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams on the half-hour live – which did unfortunately mean with all the commercial breaks. Leno’s monologue and NBC’s newscast -- about as diverse but accurate a read on what America is thinking as any you would likely find within an hour on the dial.

But suddenly Brian Williams is gone and Leno has taken over the entire midnight hour. The problem with that is that once you have been weaned on to a 30 minute Leno show with no commercials – they had cut it so you had just the monologue, the two guests, and the music act at the end and it was usually only a day or two old – it’s going to be real tough to go back to the real world.

But what happened to Brian Williams? The best that CNBC Europe Communications Director Hugo Foulds,could tell us is, “I can confirm that NBC Nightly News will no longer be carried by CNBC in Europe due to international distribution changes made by NBC Universal in the USA.” When pressed for details he said he didn’t know, but  he would ask the Nightly News press office to contact us – which it hasn’t – and we tried twice contacting NBC Universal, but as we write this after 72 hours still no response from there, either.

Unless NBC has another pan-European distribution in mind, we, based in Switzerland, will miss the highest rated US TV terrestrial network news show – not so much for what we learn (the 24-hour cable networks keep us abreast) – but rather as a reminder of what one no longer sees on that broadcast.

During the recent Icelandic volcano story, for instance, when European air travellers were stranded European viewers to the program were treated to a screen telling us the network didn’t have the right to show that video outside the US. In other words, NBC has trouble getting its own people -- reporters, crew -- on the ground in the first 24 hours, maybe even 48 hours of breaking news depending on location – Heathrow Airport in London not so difficult, other European airports or the volcano site in Iceland another story -- and the network has obviously over the years become more and more dependent for its foreign video and sometimes on-camera reporting from agencies and foreign broadcasters because  apart from London it has closed all of its European bureaus.

Not seeing the video and just listening to repetitive music was happening with more and more frequency (that’s what cost cutting apparently does) and while US viewers would not have noticed anything, for those viewing outside the country the program provided a real window on how little foreign news there is on the program to begin with, and when it comes to breaking foreign news the many times foreign viewers would not get to see the video or hear the audio because NBC had to buy it in and didn’t have rights outside the US.

No problem, of course with their fireman-enterprise reporting once they get, for instance, an Anne Thomson from New York to Rome to cover the Vatican for a few days – although a bit late in the child abuse scandal story still dogging the Roman Catholic Church and that story still has daily legs but she is now back in New York -- or when Richard Engel is infrequently embedded with troops in Afghanistan for award-winning coverage, but that kind of coverage is just plain too few and far between.

When you think back to NBC News’ heritage with Huntley-Brinkley, John Chancellor, and for a while with Tom Brokaw when the network spent some real money on its own foreign news coverage, it’s a great pity and disservice to viewers to see how reduced budgets have so affected the network’s foreign news coverage. For those old enough to remember, can you envision having no daily actual on-the-ground reporting from the Vietnam War as is now the case with Iraq and Afghanistan where US troops every day are in harm’s way? Those aren’t stories deserving to be covered like the Vietnam War, or it just costs too much these days given the new corporate masters? When one remembers the daily houndings the military and government officials got in Saigon, no doubt the military and the government are real pleased not to have that story from Iraq and Afghanistan on every night, and not getting the difficult questions from reporters on the ground who know what is what. What price democracy?

NBC of course, is not alone -- the other networks are similarly guilty. When one remembers The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite coverage of the Vietnam War – there must have been two or three reports daily from different correspondents on the ground – and the amount of foreign coverage on CBS today, well, Mr. Cronkite among others, must be turning in his grave.

Yes, NBC News is still the US terrestrial network ratings leader and according to most accounts the news division continues making a very neat profit, but that doesn’t mean what it has done to its foreign news coverage is right. There’s a reason why Americans don’t know as much as they should about the world around them and US news organizations, by their cutbacks, deserve a great deal of that blame and shame.