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[dropcap]A [/dropcap]trailer teasing the newest Star Wars film has fans of the franchise very excited. But they’re not the only ones; the Disney-owned nightly newscast ABC World News has also found the upcoming Disney film to be an important news story too.
ABC “reported” on the trailer on its Friday nightly news program (11/28/14), with anchor Amy Robach explaining that “theatergoers have been rushing the box office just to see the preview of the much anticipated Star Wars movie.”
If you find it a little odd that a news broadcast would devote much–or any–time to a preview for a movie, reporter Nick Watt was there to break the bad news: “The movie doesn’t open until December next year. This is only gonna intensify.”
Which it did–a few days later, again on ABC‘s nightly newscast. On the December 1 edition, Watt was on hand again to go over some of the “secrets” the trailer reveals about the new movie. He closed with these thoughts:
Are we all overthinking this? Yes. And that’s OK. We’re supposed to.
That’s especially true for a media outlet promoting a most certainly overhyped movie produced by its parent company.
This isn’t the first time ABC News has done something like this (FAIR Blog, 5/6/14). And, to be fair, they’re not the only ones in on this game.
As noted by TVNewser (11/26/14), NBCNews aired a “special” called “The Making of Peter Pan Live!,” which promoted an upcoming NBC TV broadcast of a Peter Pan musical. The title role is played by Allison Williams, who happens to be the daughter of Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, who reported her casting on his newscast back in July (7/30/14).
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