Anchor’s tweet provides clues about ‘NBC News Daily’ set, graphics

NBC News anchor and correspondent Kate Snow tweeted a photo of her and co-anchor Aaron Gilchrist on what will become the home of “NBC News Daily,” the new midday newscast the network is launching Sept. 12, 2022, to replace “Days of Our Lives.”

It appears that “Daily” will use the set originally built for “NBC Nightly News” that’s adjacent to MSNBC’s Studio 3A and was formerly designated as Studio 3C.

Snow’s photo shows her and Gilchrist standing near the video tower in the space, which was previously used to introduce top stories on “Nightly,” among other uses.

Vicky Nguyen and Morgan Radford are also slated to appear on “Daily,” which will air at 1 p.m. eastern on select NBC stations and then from 2 to 4 p.m. on streamer NBC News Now.

NBC News did not respond to a request for comment from NewscastStudio about the show’s look or home, but Snow’s caption indicates the studio as her “new digs,” so it’s likely that’s where the show will end up debuting from.

The space, which is sometimes identified as Studio 3AW (“W” for “west”), boasts plentiful video panels, including the jigsaw array camera left of the tower and vista alcove camera right, are filled with clean, sharp graphics in white, blues and teals with reddish accents. 

A logo, which includes the sans serif version of the NBC News lockup atop the word “Daily” in a lighter, spaced-out sans serif below is also shown. This logo hasn’t been officially identified as the show logo, but what appears to be an identical design has appeared behind anchors who have been making live appearances on NBC affiliates across the country promoting the new show.

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Accents include oversized outlines of the peacock feathers, hashmarks as well as a mix of solid, typographic and gradient backgrounds. 

As a nod to its name, the graphics also appear to use text of the days of the week as a motif. This includes large versions spelled out in full in teal against both blue and white backgrounds as well as microtext versions that use the three-letter and single-letter abbreviations for each day.

The image Snow posted wasn’t animated nor did it show the full look, but it’s easy to see how the graphics could use animated to flip through the days and eventually land on the current day of the week, triggering some kind of animation or highlight. 

To the far right of Snow’s image one of the vista alcove video walls shows what appears to be the entire date spelled out, including the day of the week in larger letters above the month, day and, perhaps, year.

Much of the typography uses Founders Grotesk, which is also used on NBC News digital properties and “Hallie Jackson Now” on NBC News Now.

Later, the key art for the show would start appearing, with a look that heavily mirrored the on-set graphics.

Since “Nightly” moved out in September 2021, the studio has remained in place and mostly unchanged, though some minor updates were needed due to the removal of the view of the newsroom after NBC renovated MSNBC’s side of 3A in 2021.

Previously, the studio had a glass wall and door that opened into a small workspace situated between the “Nightly” and MSNBC side of the space. A movable wall could be rolled into place to block the view to the far end of the studio to prevent MSNBC productions from appearing behind anchor Lester Holt.

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The space where the workstations were is not occupied by a green screen box studio that can be combined with MSNBC’s space for extended reality segments or used by itself.

The set “Daily” is inheriting has also been used for a variety of MSNBC programs and is also home to “Early Today.” During the COVID-19 pandemic, it was also used as an alternative full and insert studio as part of social distancing efforts.

Former anchor Brian Williams, for example, appeared during 2020 election coverage from the space, while Joy Reid, Rachel Maddow and Nicolle Wallace were seated spaced out on the other side of 3A.