Sunday night’s Emmy Awards weren’t bad, but the same can’t be said of NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams’ cameo, in which he flogged NBC’s Saturday Night Live Emmy-nominated writers.
Washington Post TV critic Lisa Moraes thought it was swell in her real-time blogging of the awards show.
The reading of best writers in comedy/variety series is always one of the highlights of the Emmy show but this year was particularly original. Billy Crystal singing the Letterman show names and Brian Williams reading hte [sic] “SNL” names were particularly good.
Or . . . maybe . . . a . . . little . . . unseemly – not unlike Williams’ pimping of Jay Leno’s new 10 p.m. show during the NBC News “Inside the White House” series last May.
It’s not that Williams is a wholly owned subsidiary of NBC’s entertainment division.
It’s just that he looks like it.
Campaign Outsider 
Agreed. They’ve lost the integrity that maintained a clear line between reporting the news and promoting their network’s program. If you ever watch the local 6:00 PM news, how many times have you seen alleged news pieces that end with ‘and you can see the full… right here on channel 5 at 10:00 PM? If they deleted the self-promotion bits from their news, they could cut an entire 30 minute news program from their dinnertime lineup.