After incurring heavy costs with their coverage of the uprisings in Libya, Egypt, and Tunisia as well as the Japanese earthquake and tsunami disasters, it's unclear whether the broadcast networks and cable news channels will be willing -- or able -- to devote the kind of resources to the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton that they had originally planned. (Several networks were able to offset The Heavy costs of covering the 1981 Prince Charles/Diana nuptials by selling edited home-video recordings of the event.) Any U.S. network cutbacks could redound to the benefit of BBC America, which announced Wednesday that it plans to broadcast the April 29 ceremonies live and commercial free. The channel said that it will carry the feed of BBC One, anchored by Huw Edwards -- providing U.S. viewers the same experience "as if they were sitting in a British living room watching the BBC."

17/03/2011