LIVE! FROM THE BASEMENT!

TV News ‘Home Studios’ in a Time of Pandemic

While I've been sheltering in place and napping in place, the Big TV News Stars have kept working through the Coronavirus Pandemic, setting up home studios and anchoring from their basements and dens and rumpus rooms. For me this has been the most fascinating part of the last few weeks of couch-sitting in place and watching TV in place.

I’ve always been interested in How Other People Live but these home studios have really offered a glimpse into the home lives of Big TV News Stars.

And yes, I am aware that they are aware these home studios are being broadcast and cablecast for all the world to see. So I’m sure that for many the backgrounds are carefully selected for maximum impressiveness.

I’m especially taken with the stars who chose backgrounds that included their personal bookcase.

That probably dates back to 1986 when I interviewed David Letterman in his New York office. The NBC publicist showed me in before Dave got back from his taping. So I took that time to investigate his bookshelf. Among the many volumes of forgotten lore was his high school yearbook. His high school yearbook!

It turned out to be the perfect icebreaker and for the first five minutes of the interview, Dave and I sat there and thumbed through his annual. He would stop every few pages to make a wisecrack about one of the pictures. “Seriously, nobody looked like that in 1965, did they?” he would say and snicker.

So if I were setting up a home studio, I’m sure, I would have a bookshelf background. In fact I’ve been thinking, if I were setting up a home studio which bookshelf would I sit in front of. I’d want to impress the audience with my literary bona fides. Maybe I would run out to Barnes & Noble and grab up a stack of Shakespeare plays. Oh, that’s right, B&N is closed. In the end I’m sure I’d make sure my background included a healthy stock of my own books, many of them covers out, not spines out.

Here is my collection of Big Stars’ Home Studio photos.

The most famous home studio belongs, or belonged, to the Today Show’s Savannah Guthrie, and not just because she hosts a broadcast network show but also because she may have been the first to “anchor in place.” She got the sniffles early on and NBC sent her home to anchor from her basement – identified as being in upstate New York – with her husband as her camera operator/director. Her home studio is, or was (she moved back to the Rockefeller Center studio this morning) the least interesting of all I’ve seen, just a bland blue background. She noted on air that the door was duct taped shut to keep the kids out. I’ve never had a kid who couldn’t bust through a duct taped door. But that’s another story….\

Good Morning America's Robin Roberts chose what appears to be her living room, with fresh flowers, a few framed photographs and what may be some sort of collectible doll. Or a carnation. 

The primary focus in the home studio of CBS This Morning's Anthony Mason isn't Anthony Mason but some very striking painting. I majored in math so I can't identify the artist. 

What do Emmy winners do with their Emmys? CNN London correspondent Nic Robertson uses his as a bookend. 

CNBC's Sara Eisen has a really odd looking knick knack on the shelf behind her. Could that be the head of a parking meter? Perhaps she's a big fan of the opening scene of Cool Hand Luke, when a drunken Paul Newman is arrested for cutting the heads off parking meters. 

Eisen's CNBC colleague Wilford Frost, the 6'5" inch son of Sir David Frost, looks to me like he lives in the stateroom of a cruise ship that's docked next to another cruise ship. See the balcony across from his. My wife thinks it's a hotel suite or an apartment. 

Still at CNBC I'm trying to figure out that row of red books behind Andrew Ross Sorkin. They may have something to do with high finance and I'm more on the low finance side of economics. 

CBS News' Jericka Duncan has a wall hanging of inspirational phrases and a bookshelf of books whose titles I can almost read. 

Meg Tirrell of CNBC has a nice window overlooking something. 

I finally got around to posing for my own home studio photo. Make of it what you will....