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The Situation Room
The Situation Room
Format	News Program Live Action
Presented by	Wolf Blitzer
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	Unknown
Production
Running time	180 minutes (4-7 p.m. ET)
Broadcast
Original channel	CNN
Picture format	480i (SDTV)
Original run	August 8, 2005 – Present
External links
Official website
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

The Situation Room is an afternoon/early evening newscast on CNN hosted by Wolf Blitzer that first aired on August 8, 2005. The show replaces three politics and hard news programs (Judy Woodruff's Inside Politics, Crossfire (cancelled on June 3, 2005) and Wolf Blitzer Reports).

At first, the newscast aired live from 3-6 p.m. ET and was subdivided into an hour devoted to politics, an hour devoted to security, and an hour devoted to international news. However, on November 2, 2005, CNN announced that The Situation Room would be chopped up: block 1 would air live from 4-6 p.m. ET, and block 2 would air live from 7-8 p.m. ET (taking over the timeslot held by Anderson Cooper 360 which moved to 10 p.m. ET). Lou Dobbs Tonight aired between the two blocks. Effective 5 November 2007, the show reverted to a single 3-hour block from 4:00-7:00pm ET to give more focus to the presidential election scheduled to take place 1 year from that date. Lou Dobbs Tonight has moved up to 7:00 pm ET. The third hour of The Situation Room is simulcasted on CNN International.

A number of CNN journalists and pundits often join Blitzer, including John King, Candy Crowley, Jack Cafferty, Donna Brazile, Ali Velshi, Carol Costello, Suzanne Malveaux , Abbi Tatton, Paul Begala, Bay Buchanan, James Carville, and J.C. Watts.

The show begins with the following (or a variation of this) phrase: To our viewers: You're in the Situation Room - where news and information are arriving all the time. Standing by: CNN reporters across the United States and around the world to bring you the day's top stories. Happening Now ... I'm Wolf Blitzer, and You're in the Situation Room." One other phrase Blitzer used during election coverage- "To Our Viewers in the United States and Around the World I'm Wolf Blitzer and You're in the Situation Room."

The Happening Now statement to introduce the day's top stories is a remnant from the show's primary predecessor, Wolf Blitzer Reports.

The show has garnered criticism for devoting excessive coverage to human interest stories, notably devoting almost an hour of commercial free coverage to a story about a virus affecting their Windows 2000 computers.[1]^{[citation needed]} Much of the criticism comes from satirist Jon Stewart, who has mocked the reporting of the show on multiple occasions. Saturday Night Live would later lampoon The Situation Room following the fallout from the death of Anna Nicole Smith and its excessive news coverage of the story in early 2007. However, the show also earned critical praise for its multiple-screen coverage of Hurricane Katrina.

[edit] Behind the scenes and studio uses

The Situation Room differs in some ways from similar cable news programs. For instance, use of eight video screens requires extra coordination. Two control rooms are used: One is exclusively used for the show itself, while the second is used to maintain content in the large eight-panel video wall. The show also makes use of live RSS feeds that scroll in the background at various times during the show. Live video feeds are commonly present in the show's format.

The show is broadcast live from CNN's studios in Washington D.C but during major voting events starting with the 2006 mid-term elections, the show mainly airs from the Time Warner Center in New York City using that broadcast centre's larger video walls. It continues to do so during the afternoons of major Presidential primary days, party conventions and debate nights when host Blitzer takes part in CNN's "Election Center" coverage. (Cast member Cafferty is regularly based at the Time Warner Center.)

While Blitzer may be in New York during other regular days, video walls from the DC set are still primarily employed to show incoming images.

[edit] External links

• Official site