The Royal Wedding on the Telly


With just 90-something days to go till the Wedding of the Year/Decade, you can bet that news outlets and television stations on both sides of the pond, and elsewhere, are plotting their strategies and schedules for the weeks and days leading up to the big event at 11 a.m. on April 29th. So far, TLC is the only channel that's given out any information on their royal line up - during the five days leading up to royal wedding, TLC said on Wednesday that it will air specials featuring archived and other footage, interviews and a round-table discussion with experts on royalty. The U.K.-themed week, in partnership with ITV Studios, also will include a show focusing on both British and American hoarders and "extreme" collectors of royal memorabilia. One hopes they'll focus on the lady featured in our right sidebar and not on, er, one.

TLC also plans live coverage of the wedding, with a condensed version of the event set to air April 30-May 1. But you won't have to wait till April - beginning next month, TLC will show "The Queen," a new two-hour special that explores romance, weddings and divorce among members of Queen Elizabeth II's family. The special will air Feb. 13 (9 p.m. EST). The program will be preceded by repeats of two specials about William and his fiancee: "William and Kate: A Royal Love Story" (7 p.m. EST) and "William, Kate and Royal Weddings" (8 p.m. EST).

For TLC, home of "Four Weddings," "Say Yes to the Dress" and other wedding-themed shows, the week long coverage is intended to enhance viewers' "overall royal experience" of the Westminster Abbey ceremony, said programming executive Nancy Daniels.

"This is without question the most widely anticipated wedding in a generation," Paul Buccieri, ITV Studios America president and CEO, said in a statement, promising American viewers "intimate access to this landmark event."

Right . . . . . Just you, me and a couple of million others . . . . . Reports are that Rupert Murdoch’s British Sky Broadcasting Group is negotiating with royal officials to show the nuptials on television, and the talks, which involve the BBC, also are said to include a plan to possibly shoot the ceremony in 3-D and broadcast it to cinemas throughout the world. Which will delight the folks at Royal Caribbean Cruises, who plan to broadcast the wedding live across all 40 ships in their fleet on 29th April.

Stay tuned . . . . . .

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