Newscaster Cameo

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    On occasion, a film or TV show will feature a news segment discussing events happening within the show. The fictional scene stars an actual newscaster who delivers that sort of segment in Real Life.

    Related to Practical Voice Over, where the voices are frequently recognizable newscasters. Sometimes achieved in dramatizations by use of Stock Footage.

    Sister Trope to Leno Device, which uses a talk show or other nonfiction entertainment, rather than a straight news program. Subtrope of As Himself and The Cameo. Not to be confused with Kent Brockman News, though it can certainly take that role.

    Examples of Newscaster Cameo include:

    Anime and Manga

    • News anchor Christel Takigawa makes several appearances as herself delivering news on Tokyo Magnitude 8.

    Film

    • Bill "Chilly Billy" Cardille, a Pittsburgh reporter makes a fairly long appearence as himself in Night of the Living Dead. His daughter Lori later went to star in Day of the Dead.
    • Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Real Life anchorman Howard K. Smith gives a TV news report on the (fake) anthrax scare that the government is using to make people evacuate the area around Devil's Tower.
    • Apollo 13 has Stock Footage of news reports from the time.
    • Richard Valeriani, a long-time White House correspondent, played himself reporting the backstory leading to the plot of Crimson Tide.
    • A lot of actual reporters "played themselves" in Contact.
    • At the end of Spies Like Us, Edwin Newman plays himself reporting on U.S.-Soviet disarmament talks.
    • Interestingly, RoboCop had several anchors from Entertainment Tonight (e.g. Leeza Gibbons) appear as newscasters.
    • The Man Who Sued God had Chris Bath (one of the better-known Seven Network News Journalists) appear as a newsreader.
    • Shaun of the Dead features Sky News' Jeremy Thompson, and Channel 4's Krishnan Guru-Murthy as Shaun is flicking through the channels as the outbreak hits.
    • Japanese news reporter Saburo Iketani appeared as himself in several Toho Kaiju films during the 60's, most notably in Destroy All Monsters.
    • Tyler Perry's movie Daddy's Little Girls has Monica Pearson, an actual reporter from Atlanta(that most people in Georgia have heard of), talk about the main character being accused of rape.
    • Greg Warmoth, a newscaster from the local ABC affiliate in Central Florida, WFTV, can be seen briefly at the end of Armageddon, reporting on the successful mission.
    • Matt Lauer interviewed Rick Marshall (Will Ferrell's character) in the movie remake of Land of the Lost. It didn't go well.
    • In Oh God Book II, Hugh Downs and Barbara Walters appear to discuss Tracy's "Think God" campaign.
    • Chris Matthews is the primary newsman in Man of the Year
    • Jules Asner and Steve Kmetko from E! News Daily show up in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, where Jules gets to read a cleaned-up version of Jay's profanity-laced tirades on the air:

    "Once we get to Hollywood and find those Miramax "expletive-deleted" who are making the Bluntman and Chronic movie, we're gonna make 'em eat our "expletive-deleted", then "expletive-deleted", which is made up of our "expletive-deleted", then eat their "expletive-deleted", which is made up of our "expletive-deleted" that we made 'em eat. Unquote."

    • It Happened Here. A chilling version occurs in this Alternate History film about a Nazi-occupied Britain, where veteran wartime BBC radio announcers Alvar Lidell and John Snagge give their voice to fascist propaganda newsreels.
    • Woody Allen's "Bananas" had both Roger Grimsby and Howard Cosell making news broadcasts of a particularly idiotic nature.

    Live Action TV

    • A Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps episode, "Dead", had North West Tonight's Gordon Burns as himself.
    • The BBC revels in this, presumably because the national news is filmed down the hall from a lot of the TV shows, so it's a matter of popping your head round the door.
      • Andrew Marr and Louise Minchin have played themselves on Doctor Who and Torchwood respectively. Another BBC newsreader, Huw Edwards, played the Olympic opening commentator in Fear Her, although he was credited for playing the role of the 'Commentator'.
      • Reporter Alex MacIntosh appears as himself in the Doctor Who serial "Day of the Daleks", reporting on the peace conference. And even earlier, Kenneth Kendal in The War Machines.
      • Meredith Vieira cameoed in "The Wedding of River Song."
      • BBC News presenter Richard Baker made some appearances in Monty Python's Flying Circus. He also appeared in The Goodies, along with Michael Aspel and others.
      • Yes Minister borrowed a number of reasonably well known BBC reporters and interviewers (such as Ludovic Kennedy, Sue Lawley, and Nicholas Witchell) to report on the events of the episode (and occasionally to interact with the titular minister - at least once in the talk-show format, but also at least once to conduct a regular journalistic interview).
      • This is the main reason Ghostwatch managed to fuck with so many viewers—every anchor was a well-known BBC newscaster.
      • Aversion: The head of BBC News banned their reporters from working with their Panel Game The Bubble, where contestants, having been hidden from the world for a week, have to identify real news stories intertwined with fake ones.
    • Spike Milligan did a sketch where Corbett Woodall read an ordinary-sounding news bulletin while Milligan shouted out the newsreader's inner monologue. (Although Woodall wasn't all that well known at the time.)
    • Angela Rippon famously appeared on The Morecambe and Wise Show, interrupting a faux news bulletin with a dance routine.
    • Several Chicago local newspeople cameoed as themselves during the run of Early Edition. Most of the time they then ran an "exclusive" story on the behind-the-scenes making-of during that evening's late news.
    • On Arrested Development, real life Los Angeles anchor John Beard plays himself often, reporting on the Bluth family's problems.
    • Howard K. Smith was a well known news reporter from World War II to the 1970s. He appeared as himself as a newscaster on V.
    • Australian news reader Edwin Maher appeared on an Australian sketch comedy show (I think it was The Big Gig but can't remember for certain) announcing that the ABC had been bought by Rupert Murdoch and showing the new ABC logo: three breasts.
    • On Friends, Joey and Chandler adopting the chick and the duck is precipitated by Joey seeing a report by Sue Simmons of WNBC-NY discussing why not to get a baby chick at Easter.
    • Real anchors (and even production graphics of KLAS Las Vegas anchors have been used on the original CSI.
    • The TV series Greek lent credibility to a weather-related episode by having an actual ABC local weather reporter do the forecast. Since the series is set in Ohio, the weather reporter was from an Ohio ABC station (Specifically, Stan Stachak from the Toledo ABC-owned station WTVG, which would be so close, but yet so far from where Cyprus-Rhodes actually is in Ohio.)
    • Spooks got in trouble with their network for working with Sky News for a news clip on a TV in the background.
    • Jon Snow, lead anchor for Channel 4 news, appears on The Big Fat Quiz of the Year annually, reporting a song as if it were a news story, for the contestants having to identify the song in question. Like This.
    • There's an episode of Blackadder the Third, Dish and Dishonesty, where this happens. The plot revolves around trying to get Baldrick elected as a member of Parliament, and features a cameo by political commentator Vincent Hanna, appearing as "his own great-great-grandfather."
    • Ukee Washington, of KYW-TV (a CBS affiliate in Philadelphia), occasionally appears on Cold Case, which is set in Philadelphia.
    • The first Cosby Show Dream Sequence episode "The Day the Spores Landed" begins with a story being read by unseen NBC News reporter John Palmer, who was also working for NBC as the newsreader for the network's morning news program, The Today Show.
    • Absolute Power had Prentiss-McCabe clients interviewed by people like BBC Breakfasts Dermot Murnaghan and Newsnights Kirsty Wark ... but a No Celebrities Were Harmed version of Jeremy Paxman, since they were blackmailing "Jonathan Crossman" to give their client an easy interview.
    • The Thick of It uses spliced Stock Footage of Jeremy Paxman and Newsnight in the special "Rise of the Nutters", and in series three Richard Bacon guest-stars as himself hosting a debate between department ministers on Radio 5.
    • Bree Walker appeared in this capacity on Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
    • Averted in From the Earth to the Moon. Rather than using stock footage of Walter Cronkite or Jules Bergman, Emmett Seaborn (working for the fictional "NTC" network) was created. This also meant that the same newscaster could be used for every single Apollo mission.
    • Angel: In the season 4 episode "Awakening" the late Larry McCormick, real-life Los Angeles news anchor, appeared "on-air" as himself.

    Theatre

    • Rather interestingly, for the York Theatre Royal Pantomime in 2010 they had a cameo of the news presenters for BBC Yorkshire. They have a video segment in each panto

    Radio

    • Several episodes of The Goon Show feature fictional news reports by real-life newsreader John Snagge.

    Web Comics

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