It’s not too early to plan your Royal Wedding viewing
The big event, Britain’s Prince Harry’s wedding with “Suits” cast member Meghan Markle, may be two weeks away, Saturday, May 19, but readers who want to watch it may want to choose some broadcast mode for that purpose now.
There will be plenty of options, including a re-run on BBC America on the wedding day.
The nuptials are, quite naturally, taking place in England, St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle to be exact, so the noon ceremony outside London begins at 7 a.m. in Philadelphia.
The traditional networks — CBS, ABC, and NBC — are beginning their coverage earlier than that, CBS, with Gayle King among its correspondents, at 4 a.m. while NBC joins at 4:30, and ABC catches up at 5.
E! also begins its programming at 5. BBC will be prominent among the broadcasters. There are oodles of chances to stream, two on ABC.com alone, and cable outlets are entering the fray. One of the traditional networks, probably CBS or NBC lest Lara Spencer is on the ABC broadcast team, will be my choice.
One thing I know, if I watch, I will begin no earlier than 6:20 a.m., when arrivals to St. George’s by the Britain’s royal family are expected.
The first hour or so of coverage will include crowd shots, Meghan making her way from a London location to Windsor, about an hour’s ride that might be prolonged by well-wishers along the route. That time will also be taken up with gossip and other blather rehashing most of what we know anyway.
I don’t listen to most of the gushy stories and pennyweight controversies surrounding the wedding, but I’ve had load of fun reading the statements by unidentified Palace spokespeople, unidentified being the tradition, about various wedding and wedding-day details.
Responses are direct, terse, and factual. No griping or pleading of the press, a generally polite sort on an occasion like this, is brooked. “Will Prince Louis attend the wedding?” “No. He’s too young.” “Has a honeymoon destination been revealed.” “That information will never be revealed.” How delicious! Current speculation is on Meghan’s dress, that honeymoon site, wedding guests, and the participation of Meghan’s half-siblings. Meghan being biracial; various stories about Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip, Prince Charles, Prince William, and Princess Kate; Harry’s aunt via Princess Diana, Jane Fellowes, doing a reading; and Markle’s parents have been bandied enough to settle those curiosities. It is known William will be Harry’s, sort of the position the brothers hold in each other’s lives, and Meghan is forgoing a maid of honor to avoid choosing from among a myriad of friends. Some mystery remains about whether William’s children, Prince George and Princess Charlotte, will be among the children acting as bridesmaids and pageboys.
These, among other topics, are precisely the stories I want to skip in the coverage hours before 7 a.m., just I skip all red carpet programs before awards ceremonies and tend to look at graphics and analyze trends for myself on election nights.
Sorry anchors and reporters, I render you mute.
That way, when I see the rare correspondent I regard as a journalist, I can turn up the volume.
Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy watching major events and value television for the opportunity to do so. It’s just these days, I prefer pictures to supply their 1,000 words than to listen to reporters and anchors whose stories and analyses seem canned, repeating the bland and expected while providing little, if anything, that is enterprising or original.
Heck, I do the same thing during Phillies games.
It keeps me from being bored by or rolling my eyes at the announcers.
Television is not content to wait for the wedding to bring Harry and Meghan to your attention. The next weeks will feature other programs attached to it.
PBS has one of the people I may decide to listen to, Meredith Vieira, covering the wedding, but all of next week, the public outlet will air a daily program, “Royal Wedding Watch,” to provide background and daily updates regarding the event. These can be seen for an hour starting 10 p.m. next Monday through Thursday, and for a half-hour at 10:30 p.m. Friday. Vieira will moderate with British television presenter Matt Baker.
The reason I admire Vieira above most of the major TV press is she knows to combine the conversational and actual news. Vieira is an old-fashioned communicator who can keep a story going, and pepper it with enough salient information to keep it interesting while being reporter enough to recognize and point out something that is new or significant.
In addition to Baker, other British television personalities and experts on royalty, pageantry, and similar matters will appear nightly.
The earliest of the special programs is Friday’s “Meghan Markle: An American Princess,” airing at 8 p.m. on Fox. I hope the show mentions the related and interesting, if not pressing factoid that Winston Churchill’s mother, Jennie Jerome, was American, so America has had a hand in spawning who might be the greatest Brit of all time. I hope is also delves into the history of royal marriage, and even decisions about whom should reign, that have brought several nationalities and cultures into the British royal mix.
Lifetime could not wait to get its mitts on the Harry-Meghan relationship and presents a movie, “Harry and Meghan, A Royal Romance,” that premieres at 8 p.m. Sunday with Murray Fraser and Parisa Fitz-Henley as the featured couple.
The Smithsonian Channel gets into the acts at 9 p.m. Sunday with “Million Dollar American Princesses: Meghan Markle,” which blends Meghan’s story with those of other American actresses, Grace Kelly, who marries Rainier of Monaco, and Rita Hayworth wed to Pakistan religious royal Aly Khan, in particular.
At 7 a.m. on the wedding day, at the wedding time, HBO brings “Saturday Night Live” veterans Will Ferrell and Molly Shannon to the fore In their parodic roles of announcers named Cord and Tish, last seen at January’s Rose Parade, to do some commentating and lots of lampooning.
Perhaps the most significant tie between television and the royal wedding is Meghan Markle’s own resume in the medium. She has been the guest star on several network programs since beginning her acting actor upon graduation from Northwestern University earlier this century. For the last seven seasons, she has been a regular cast member on USA’s “Suits.” Her character, Rachel Zane, advanced from being a paralegal in Season One to a full-fledged attorney in the season that ended in December.
“Suits” was shot in Toronto, and Meghan, though a native of L.A., lived there while she was on the show. Since being engaged to Prince Harry in November, Meghan has elected to give up her acting career. She has left Toronto and will not return to “Suits.”
Meghan’s father, Thomas Markle, Sr., worked as a lighting designer for television and earned a daytime Emmy for his work on the soap opera, ABC’s “General Hospital. He also worked on Fox’s “Married… With Children” and would bring Meghan to the set, one of the places her interest in acting began.
‘I’m just a Bill’
“Schoolhouse Rock” was a staple television program to many growing in the ‘80s and beyond, including “The Goldbergs” conceiver, writer, and producer Adam Goldberg.
Timing is everything is show business, and Goldberg planned to include a snippet from “Schoolhouse Rock” in “Goldbergs” episode prior to that show’s conceiver and writer, Bob Dorough, passing away in April at age 94.
That episode airs 8 p.m. Wednesday on Channel 6. Overall, the episode is called “Space-Balls,” which deals with a subject in which Goldberg has little interest, politics, and features Dorough’s “Schoolhouse Rock” take, “I’m Just a Bill,” on how a Congressional bill is passed.