CNN To Send Small Army To Cover Royal Wedding [UPDATE]

CNN is planning on being the most trusted name in royal wedding coverage. This will be Piers Morgan's time to shine, obviously, and he raises the curtain by saying that the soon-to-be-betrothed Kate Middleton is "this classless underdog who Americans can relate to."

Via Mac McClelland (and others), I see that CNN is planning on being the most trusted name in royal wedding coverage. This will be Piers Morgan's time to shine, obviously, and he raises the curtain by saying that the soon-to-be-betrothed Kate Middleton is "this classless underdog who Americans can relate to." Well, o-kay!

CNN alone will have a team of roughly 400 reporters, cameramen and crew assigned to the wedding. The network has 50 people on the ground working on the breaking news in Japan, plus others scattered in Bahrain, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. Ten cameras will be stationed around Buckingham Palace to capture the day's money shot--the royal family assembling on the balcony as Prince William and his bride share a kiss.

I imagine that the rough breakdown is say, 150 people to cover the event, 75 people to wrangle Richard Quest, another 75 people to read everyone's royal wedding tweets out loud to America, 50 people to make sure both sides of the issue are adequately covered ("Kate Middleton: Could This Classless Tart Do Better?"), about 50 more people to staff the "CNN Grill," and of course, Anderson Cooper with be there, straight-up rescuin' people.

Anyway, if Japan/Libya/Bahrain/Egypt/Tunisia/Afghanistan/Yemen/America's unemployed could just get themselves sorted out by the end of April, that would be really swell!

UPDATE: Alex Welprin at TV Newser says CNN will have a smaller army than previously believed:

CNN says it will have 50 domestic staffers assigned to cover the wedding, with an additional 75 coming from the London bureau. In other words 150, not 400, the WSJ had it wrong.

So, less twitter, or less Quest wrangling? So many choices to consider! (Also: 50 + 75 = 150?)

Also, Welprin reports:

You can also expect correspondents on the ground in all of the Commonwealth countries, such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India and South Africa, to get reaction from locals.

I'm hoping that some Kiwi "reacts" by saying, "Hey, man, have you seen Christchurch lately?"

MORE UPDATE: Michael Calderone reports that CNN is now going down to "50 reporters, cameramen and crew." So now it's just the equivalent of the Japan earthquake/tsunami/nuclear facility crisis!

I bet we can get this down to 25, CNN!

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