This morning NBC News announced that it had acquired Stringwire, a user-generated live video service that lets news organizations request video footage, and have that live feed pushed directly to their control rooms, website, or wherever it needs to be. Stringwire founder Phil Groman will be joining NBC News as a product lead, based out of San Francisco.

The NY Times‘ Brian Stelter broke the story last night, and interviewed NBC News chief digital officer Vivian Schiller about it:

“You could get 30 people all feeding video, holding up their smartphones, and then we could look at that,” she said in an interview by phone. “We’ll be able to publish and broadcast some of them.”
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“Wherever you see a swarm of eyewitnesses on Twitter, that’s the sweet spot for Stringwire,” she said, citing the July 6 crash-landing of an Asiana jet in San Francisco. That day, photos from a passenger and a short YouTube video from the terminal were the primary images on television until a local news helicopter arrived.

The move is an important one for NBC, as the battle among TV news organizations slowly continues its shift online, and user-generated content continues to make itself a vital part of any newsgathering operation.

While UGC has been featured on TV newscasts for years, live video is the one area that is yet to break through. User-generated photos and videos really first proved their worth during coverage of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, with dozens of students taking photos and video of the aftermath. CNN’s iReport was the biggest beneficiary, and to this day it remains the largest and most robust of the user-generated content initiatives that TV organizations have built.
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Former TVNewser editor Brian Stelter guest-hosted CNN’s “Reliable Sources” today, and while Amazon founder Jeff Bezos‘ purchase of the Washington Post was the big story, there was plenty of TV news to go around as well.

For starters, there was this segment about new NBC News president Deborah Turness, which featured a shout-out to this humble blog.

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Stelter also interviewed ESPN president John Skipper about the threat posed by Fox Sports 1, which launches next week.

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It has been a rough few days in the games department for the team from “Today.”

Savannah Guthrie interviewed “Late Night” host Jimmy Fallon, and the pair played one of his trademark games, “Rock, Paper, Scissors, Pie.” It went horribly awry:

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On NBC’s primetime game show “Hollywood Game Night,” Al Roker was kicked off the comfy couch by comedian Will Sasso… though he did get some revenge.

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Remember that Hillary Clinton miniseries coming to NBC? The one that caused RNC chairman Reince Priebus to send a letter to NBC Entertainment’s president threatening to leave NBC out of the 2016 debate schedule?

Well, there is a new twist.

It looks as though Fox will be the producer of the miniseries, the New York Times‘ Bill Carter reports.

Just as NBC News has nothing to do with the miniseries, Fox News will have anything to do with it either. The likely producer is Fox Television Studios, a sister unit to FNC under the 21st Century Fox umbrella. FTVS would retain international distribution rights if they were to produce it.

Whether an association with a Fox company reduces the heat on the Clinton project seems unlikely, however, especially because in this case the criticism has also come from NBC News itself. One longtime senior news executive, who asked not to be identified criticizing the network, called the movie “wildly inappropriate for NBC to be doing.”

It was Hoda Kotb‘s birthday Friday, and her “Today” fourth-hour co-host Kathie Lee Gifford decided to put together a special present for her colleague. The result: a music video and an original song “I Want to Hoda on Your Kotb.”

Matt Lauer, Savannah Guthrie, Natalie Morales, Al Roker and Carson Daly even got in on the fun.

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First on TVNewser: The new set for NBC’s “Today” will debut on Monday, September 9, according to the show’s executive producer, Don Nash.

“It is much more than a fresh coat of paint,” Nash tells TVNewser. “It is much more ‘current’ than what we have, I think it is much more exciting. We will have a lot more bells and whistles to play with, but it is classy, just like the show itself.”

Next week will be the final week for the current Studio 1A, Nash says, with the show moving out onto the plaza for about three weeks until the new set is complete and ready for production. The show will also be getting a new graphics package to complement the new set.

“It will affect all four parts of the show, it is totally gutting the current studio,” Nash says.

“Today” has also been tweaking its format somewhat. This week  the 9 AM hour of the program was re-branded as “Today’s Take,” featuring a new introduction and voice-over, and expanding on the roundtable format with Willie Geist, Natalie Morales and Al Roker. The first news segment of the third hour was pushed down from where it had been to make room for the expanded chat section, part of a formula Nash says they have been tweaking.

“While the third hour is always going to be part of the Today show, we wanted to give it a little more definition,” Nash says. “We decided we would take what was the chat at the top of the show, called “Today’s take,” and brand the whole show that way.”

In his new novel, Martin Fletcher addresses what he calls the “universal question: How do you get on with the rest of your life in the face of horrific tragedy?”

It’s a topic the former NBC News Tel Aviv bureau chief explored frequently during his nearly-four decade career with the network, reporting from the globe’s most dangerous hot spots, often meeting interviewees “on the worst day of their lives.”

Fletcher’s fourth book, and second novel, Jacob’s Oath, is due out this fall.  He says readers will “come away full of hope, and belief in the future.” It’s what has stayed with him after a lifetime of covering wars, famine, and other hardships.

Fletcher left full-time reporting nearly four years ago, staying with NBC on a freelance basis. These days he’s less focused on covering danger zones, feeling like he’s used up too many of his nine lives.  ”For how long can you be lucky?”

The Richard Engels of the world, he says, are facing a more complicated Middle East than ever before. ”So many things going on at the same time…it looks like we’re at the beginning of a very long road,” Fletcher says during a phone interview with TVNewser from Israel.

“It’s much more dangerous today than it used to be. And the reason is that journalists have become targets.”

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It was a wild morning on NBC’s “Today” and ABC’s “Good Morning America,” as the on-air talent went toe-to-toe with some wild, dangerous creatures.

On “Today,” Kerry Sanders delivered a stand-up while running from bulls. No, really, he did. “One of the great stand-ups ever,” Matt Lauer said.

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On “GMA,” anchors Josh Elliott, Sam Champion and Lara Spencer put their acting chops to the test, as they recreated scenes from “Jaws” and “Sharknado.” It wasn’t quite as dangerous as Sanders’ stunt, but it was certainly memorable. You can watch it here.

NBC News White House correspondent and MSNBC anchor Chuck Todd says NBC Entertainment’s planned miniseries about Hillary Clinton is a “total nightmare for NBC News.”

“We know there’s this giant firewall. We know we have nothing to do with it,” Todd said. “We’re going to only own the negative. Whether it’s negative because the Clinton people are upset that it’s too tough on them, or negative because the Republicans think it’s this glorification of her. No matter what, only we are going to own it because people are going to see the peacock, and they see NBC, and they see NBC News and they think ‘well they can’t be that separate.’”

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Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski also interviewed Reince Priebus about his letters threatening to keep NBC and CNN out of the 2016 debate cycle if the Clinton specials aren’t canceled.

“You do understand that somebody like Brian Williams is pulling his hair out–I mean I haven’t talked to Brian–but the entire news division has got to be pulling their hair out going, ‘we are doing what?’ You do understand that there is that split there,” Scarborough said.

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“NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams underwent a successful knee-replacement surgery yesterday. As we noted last week he will be taking a leave of absence from the program to recover.

“Nightly” updated readers about Williams’ status on Twitter, while “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” opted to congratulate Williams by unveiling another one of its rap mashups. “Today” also wished Williams well by showing the rap.

“Because you know how much Jimmy Fallon and he have a bromance,” Natalie Morales quipped.