MSNBC Sunday originating from ‘Nightly’ set

MSNBC’s live Sunday morning coverage, anchored by Alex Witt, is using the “NBC Nightly News” set this morning.

Producers are, for the most part, sticking with very tight shots. Witt is framed against the warm reddish-wood to the right of the studio’s RP screen.

A small portion of the RP is visible on air, but it appears to be just be displaying a looped animation. The RP is shown on air with topical graphics during some shots, though wide push-ins aren’t being utilized as they are on “Nightly”; which makes the set look, at first glance, like the normal MSNBC area.

Witt did have an in-studio guest, who sat in the chair typically reserved for talent joining “Nightly News” and made use of the normal “Nightly” two-shot, with the window overlooking the newsroom visible between Witt and her guest.

That said, it’s interesting to note that there doesn’t seem to be anything going on over on the MSNBC side of the studio (though the distance and blur-factor make it tough to tell) so one must wonder why Witt isn’t over there.

MSNBC is planning special editions of “Hardball,” “The Rachel Maddow Show” and “Race for the White House,” this evening so perhaps some pre-production work or portions of some of those shows are being pre-taped on the MSNBC set.

Meanwhile, Weather Plus forecast updates are originating from what looks like someone’s desk in the MSNBC newsroom. Again, this is a pretty tight shot.

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This does reveal a key advantage of MSNBC combining its facilities in New York and also utilizing a fairly cohesive look and feel across all MSNBC and NBC News programming — the ability for this type of flexibility for when studios are in use or down for technical difficulties.