During last night's broadcast of the NBC Nightly News, a fire alarm kept interrupting the program. Anchor Brian Williams deftly continued introducing stories and reassuring viewers that it was simply a test and that no one at 30 Rock was in harm's way. Mediaite crows that Williams handled it like a "pro," though we're pretty sure being a network news anchor means you're a pro. Anyway, take a look for confirmation that Williams is as good as deflecting attention from a persistent fire alarm as he as at skewering NY Times trend stories on Brooklyn: more ›

Last night, Tina Fey paid a visit to Brian Williams and his fancy new Rock Center studio to discuss her at-home viewing habits. Fey, fresh off her "like, nine-day" maternity leave, cops to some late-night trash favorites, like Extreme Couponing, but seems conflicted over the Real Housewives franchise. more ›

30 Rock will celebrate five seasons of Reaganing, Dealbreakers and Werewolf Bar Mitzvahs tonight with their double-sized 100th episode. Michael Keaton and Condoleezza Rice will guest star in the hour-long episode, which is all about TGS trying to avoid cancellation by putting on a spectacular 100th episode. NBC is also celebrating, with a planned trio of animated 30 Rock web adventures. Below, you can watch the first one, in which Alec Baldwin’s Jack Donaghy uses his superpowers to mess with Brian Williams (who really should consider joining the cast fulltime next year): more ›

Brian Williams's appearance on Morning Joe on Christmas Eve last week has been rescued from the holiday memory hole by NYTpicker, and hooray for that, because the NBC News anchorman was really in rare form. As the talking heads were droning on about the biggest media story of 2010 (Joe Scarborough: The iPad!), Williams went on a sardonic tear about the New York Times' "discovery" of Brooklyn. "Once a day, there’s a story about all the riches offered in that borough," Williams japed. "There are young men and women wearing ironic glass frames on the streets. There are open air markets, like trading posts in the early Chippewa tribe, where you can make beads at home and then trade them for someone to come over and start a small fire in your apartment that you share with nine others." Oh, he didn't stop there; here's video: more ›

The gang from Sesame Street was out walking the red carpet last night for their 7th Annual Gala benefiting the Sesame Workshop. Held far away from their Astoria home at Cipriani on 42nd Street, the muppets (friends of the First Lady) greeted some bold-face names, and Sheryl Crow even performed a duet with Elmo. Here are some of your Sesame faves (glad to see Grover made it out!) with the likes of Mayor Bloomberg, Brian Williams and Al Roker. Why do you think muppets hate Al Roker so much; maybe he didn't deliver enough "sunny days" to the street? more ›

Everyone's an expert! 50-year-old newscaster Brian Williams is getting into the music blogging game with a "new music reporting project" called BriTunes (pronounced like iTunes). Let's just say the original BriTunes is less than thrilled about this, however Mr. Williams says, "I didn't name this thing, but I did come up with the idea." The idea of music blogging? So ahead of his time. He continues, saying, "I have always loved identifying good music and good groups—discovering them early (bar bands are best) and following them through their journey. While we'll interview some established musicians, mostly I'd like this to be a place where people can sample some of the great music being created every day." He starts with the band Deer Tick, who have been around since 2004 and are currently on a major national tour, which included plenty of dates with Jenny Lewis earlier this year. more ›

During the second part of his interview with the Republican ticket, NBC News anchor Brian Williams asked Sarah Palin to explain, "Who is a member of the elite?" Palin characterized them as, "Anyone who thinks that they're better than someone else." (Full transcript here) But then McCain chimed in, laughing, that he knew "where a lot of 'em live... in our nation's capital and New York City." The exchange starts at about four minutes in, after talk about Williams Ayers, the washed up terrorist McCain supposedly doesn't care about. more ›

Senator Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama faced off for the 20th time last night in Cleveland, Ohio, as they head towards the big March 4 primaries next week. The rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination "traded insults," as they accused each other of negative attacks regarding their health care policies. more ›

The NY Times' editorial board has made its endorsements for the upcoming primaries. While the Times' selection of Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama is interesting (the Times cites experience), we're very taken with the editorial about the Republican candidates. more ›

No More Bolaris in the Forecast You won’t be seeing John Bolaris anymore on WCBS. He was last seen this past weekend and his bio has been taken down from the CBS 2 website. He will be starting at Fox owned WTXF in Philadelphia next month. We should mention that before the Long Island native was basically run out of town on a rail down there after predicting a blizzard that never happened, although he... more ›

Wait a minute, didn't Brian Williams host Saturday NIght Live just two weeks ago, the one where Barack Obama appeared in the opening? Yes, but with the Writers Guild strike still on, Saturday Night Live decided to revisit the recent past, versus dig into old "Best of" clip shows. The unfortunate thing is that Page Six reports 90% of the SNL production staff was fired "until further notice" because of the strike. Other TV shows'... more ›

Last night, during the Brian Williams-hosted and Feist-soundtracked Saturday Night Live, the show opened with a scene from Chappaqua, New York. All of the Democrats were there to celebrate Halloween, and who was under the Barack Obama mask... ...but Barack himself! The rest of the democrats were all played by SNL cast members, though it would have been interesting to have seen them all playing themselves. As a sidenote: Brian Williams did a pretty good... more ›

A look at some noteworthy television this week: more ›

Hopefully Monday's season opener of Sesame Street will help in sweepin' these clouds away! The new season will begin how it always does, by determining the educational needs of their tv-watching tot demographic. more ›

Some more details about the death of the man whose body was found at 6th Avenue and 10th Street in Greenwich Village early yesterday morning. Forty-five-year-old Eric Wishnie had been a producer at NBC News, but was fired last September for alcohol and pill addiction. Additionally, he had been recently estranged with his wife, NBC correspondent Dawn Fratangelo. more ›

Starting on September 10th, WNBC will be making a seismic shift on the local television landscape. Live at Five is gone, with infotainment show Extra taking its place at 5 p.m. with News 4 You remaining at 5:30 p.m. However, there will be not net loss of newscasts, since WNBC will be starting a new 7 p.m. newscast, but it is not as new an idea as it would seem, since WNYW aired a 7 p.m. newscast from 1987 to 1993. WNBC’s Station Manager and Senior Vice President of News, Dan Forman, noted: “Our news at 7pm meets the needs of viewers coming home from work and is a perfect compliment to ‘NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams,’ which precedes it.” more ›

Yesterday, NBC News revealed that Virginia Tech shooting gunman Cho Seung-Hiu sent them a package of photographs, writings, and video - a "multimedia manifesto." The network turned over the materials to the authorities but also shared the package's contents during the evening news last night and on its website. more ›

Update: WNBC reports that Cho Seung Hui sent a "box containing a manifesto of sorts, photographs and other material" (including videos) to NBC News. NBC News received it today and president Steve Capus turned the box over the FBI, but MSNBC says that the box was sent between the two shootings.

The package included a long, “rambling, manifesto-like statement embedded with a series of photographs,” Capus said. The material is “hard-to-follow ... disturbing, very disturbing — very angry, profanity-laced,” he said. more ›

CBS 2 News did a bit of an unexpected midweek transition to HD news yesterday becoming the third station in the city and the second CBS owned and operated station in the country to do so after KYW in Philadelphia went HD last week. more ›

This past Wednesday, the WNBC Live at Five team was joking around with NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams. Live at Five co-anchor Perri Peltz talking about flossing and periodontal disease, and, as you can see from the YouTube video above for the first 2+ minutes, it's important but very boring stuff. So co-anchor Sue Simmons "pretends" to fall asleep during the banter...but ends up falling off her chair! Good times! more ›

In a move that was inevitable, NBC has now started to call the civil war in Iraq a civil war. On NBC News’ ”The Daily Nightly” Brian Williams writes, “We will also reference our decision today (after much consultation over the weekend with our colleagues, fellow journalists, historians, analysts and members of the military, both present and former) to describe the fighting in Iraq as a Civil War. We believe it is a more accurate reflection of what is happening there, and there was a fair amount of reaction to the decision today... even though a number of news organizations have already made a similar call.” more ›

With Tina Fey gone from the writers' staff to primetimier pastures and Chris Parnell, Horatio Sanz and Finesse Mitchell axed from the staff, people were wondering how this season of Saturday Night Live would stack up. And while articles calling it "Saturday Night Dead" are a mainstay every fall, Gothamist wasn't very confident given that the host would be Dane Cook, who already hosted not even a year ago! Here's our thoughts about the season premiere: more ›

- While being extorted, a contractor actually wrote "Extortion" on the check stub on one of his payments more ›

Peter Jennings, the ABC News anchor up until this past April when he announced he had lung cancer, died last night at his Central Park West home. The NY Times obituary describes him as "urbane", which definitely rings true: Of the Big Three anchors, Dan Rather was blunt and straight-talking, Tom Brokaw was more paternalistic, and Jennings was simply smooth. Jennings was an international journalist at heart, relishing the opportunity to report from overseas, notably being the first bureau chief for an American station in an Arab country (Lebanon, 1968). Other parts of Jennings' personal background were interesting to the public: The fact that he was Canadian, how he was a high school drop out, and his three marriages. This morning, Tom Brokaw calls Jennings his and Rather's "prince," as the three anchors were good friends. It really is the end of an era of news anchors; the only ones we can think of these days are Brian Williams (we watched a lot of MSNBC in our day) and Bob Schieffer (he's been around forever). more ›

Starting today, the Reverend Billy Graham will be preaching in Flushing, Queens in what it seems like everyone is excitedly calling "his last crusade" because he's old and seems to be ready to die. The "crusade" is expected to attract hundreds of thousands of people, and it'll be a big media event, too - Brian Williams anchoring the NBC Nightly News tonight from Flushing Meadows Park tonight; the Hollywood Reporter points out that Graham's 1957 sermon at Madison Square Garden was televised by ABC. The 86 year-old preacher even visited Flushing Meadows Park last night, to check out the site and thank workers. Gothamist hopes there's an extensive air-conditioning system onstage, as it's supposed to be humid, hot, hazy, and yes, hellish, this weekend, though TV producers might think a fainting Graham would make good TV. This weekend's event is an expensive $6.8 million, with all sorts of Grahamites available (the NY Times has one of their trademark fun graphics of what's where). more ›

Gothamist knew there was a reason why we loved Brian Williams so much. Besides being hilarious and loving pizza, the NBC Nightly News anchor apparently loves sexy TV, too. Rush and Molloy report that when stars of The L Word (think Sex and the City without the men and the New York, but with more ladies) were at Michael's, Williams said, "On Sundays in my house, it's all about the lesbians of 'The L Word.'" Word. The media is all about loving the ladies - from the MILFS of Wisteria Lane to Los Angeleno lesbians...just as long as they are hot. Mayor Bloomberg, NYC needs a show about MILF-y lesbians STAT! more ›