The Pantagraph from Bloomington, Illinois • Page 46

D8 The Pantagraph Thursday, November 22, 2001 www.pantagraph.com ENTERTAINMENT It's no holiday to televise Thanksgiving parade Mi3 $wW- i WW IM- L'' Vn I Lauer, Roker will have joined them after zipping downtown with a police escort. There, NBC deploys 11 eras as well as its encampment, of broadcast trailers and-trucks. One trailer contains the trol-room lair of Lachman, Bracken and director Gary-. Halverson (another Macy's rade veteran whose far-flung credits include "Friends" and Metropolitan Opera broads casts). They will track the parade's progress, and make mo- ment-to-moment adjustments to keep the show flowing and on schedule.

The occasional glitch adds to their fun. Bracken remembers-how, one year, the audio went kaput. Everything went silent just before a commercial break. That gave engineers 150 seconds to fix the They did, with seven seconds to spare. If they hadn't? "We could have routed all the through the mixing board of' the separate music Bracken says.

"You have to have a backup." Three hours after it began, the show is over. The broadcast is still unreeling on tape-delay for each of the westward time zones. But in the production trailer, "hopefully, there will be'" a lot of congratulations and backslapping," says Bracken. A good show just another -reason for him to be thankful. Eastern times), crews set up final camera positions as well as the host platform at 34th Street and Broadway.

From 3 to 5 a.m., each band does a practice march through the Herald Square performance area. From 5 to 7 a.m., a caravan of golf carts each labeled as the float for which it's subbing pass before the cameras for a start-to-finish technical rehearsal. At 7 a.m., ensembles from the four featured Broadway musicals rehearse. At 8:15, the big opening number has a final run-through. Then, at 8:30, there's a practice ribbon-cutting uptown.

"Then everybody takes a break until 8:55," says Bracken, "and we're on the air at 9." Couric, Lauer and Roker arrive early after days of poring over a dictionary-thick briefing book organized with hard facts and giddy descriptions. The hosts, Bracken says, "have to know what's coming in the parade, and they have to be able to adapt when something changes. They're not just reading the TelePrompTer. They're very much involved. The parade starts at 77th Street and Central Park West, where five cameras cover the ribbon-cutting as well as interviews by Roker.

By the time the procession reaches Herald Square, under the watchful eyes of Couric and By Frazler Moore ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW YORK Bill Bracken hasn't had Thanksgiving off in years, but at least he can sleep late. He reported for work today at 2 a.m. Most of his co-workers have been there since midnight. Bracken is the supervising producer of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade telecast on NBC a TV event that stretches back a half-century. This is the eighth year Bracken has joined executive producer Brad Lachman to create the paradecast, and, in between other projects (notably their "Jennifer Lopez in Concert" special that NBC aired Tuesday), they began planning their Thanksgiving feast in August.

Since then, they have rallied a crew of more than 100 NBC engineers, camera operators, sound technicians, lighting personnel and stagehands. They have welcomed back as hosts the "Today" show's Katie Couric, Matt Lauer and Al Roker They have let anyone who asks know the 9-11 attacks won't stop the parade or influence how it's televised. And in their temporary quarters at NBC in Rockefeller Center; they have faced the many challenges of this 75th annual cavalcade. These include: 15 giant character balloons, more than two dozen floats, 12 marching bands, 21 themed clown groups, 14 entertainment groups, as Associated Press Bill Bracken posed with two Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade posters at NBC headquarters In New York earlier this month. He is NBC's supervising producer for the event airing at 8 a.m.

CST today. well as celebrities, the Rock-ettes and, of course, Santa Claus all coursing down a 212-mile route from Manhattan's Upper West Side to Herald Square, where Macy's department store happens to be. "This is not like covering something at an arena," notes the 41-year-old Bracken, who began his career as a "That's Incredible!" researcher. "And we can't say, 'Stop! Back it Once it starts, that parade keeps coming, no matter what." That's why, in the wee hours before the parade, almost every part of it is given a dry run. And that's why today is a long day for Bracken and his colleagues.

From midnight to 3 a.m. (all ABC News anchor doesn't apologize for remaining a Canadian KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS DALLAS Invariably unflappable on the air, ABC anchor Peter Jennings admitted to feeling "anxious" about his first plane trip since the Sept. 11 ter count," Jennings said. "I do not iri wish to superimpose my emb- tions. People are having dreadful experience as it is.

I don't think it's helpful if they-know I'm having a dreadful experience. The most personal en- counter anybody on television can have with a mass is at moments of crisis. And you either pass or you don't. "You are who you are. If you--' try to somehow take up a differ ent posture or position, the au-dience will see through you like an X-ray machine." bending aversions to them, no matter what they do or say.

In Jennings' case, this sometimes is heightened by the fact that he's still proud to be a Canadian. That he hasn't become an American citizen is considered highly unpatriotic by some. Jennings, who was born 63 years ago in Toronto, didn't bristle when this was broached. "When passions are very high, there are a variety of interpretations around the country of what patriotism is," he said. "I am Canadian.

And if anybody asks me about it, it's a personal matter. It has a lot to do with my family and my family's history and my kids. But I'm very curious to know why any of our backgrounds are an issue for people." Jennings' father, famed Canadian Broadcasting Corporation journalist Charles Jennings, taught him above all to keep his demeanor in check when dispensing news small, large or colossal, as it was on Sept. 11. "It's not my emotions that rorist strikes.

"But nothing has happened, so I'm not on tenterhooks as I was," he said Sunday from the safer confines of a Dallas hotel York he went to San Francisco; San Diego; Boulder, and Dallas before returning to home base Monday night. "Ask the Media" programs were on the agenda at all four stops. But Jennings had one of his more memorable encounters off-camera in the Texas Stadium parking lot before Sunday's Dallas Cowboys-Philadelphia Eagles game. Most everyone was upbeat about the future, he recalled. But one man had a distinctly contrary reaction after Jennings asked, "Does anything worry you?" "He looked me right in the eye he was quite tense and he said, 'Yeah, the Jennings wondered why he felt that way "Because they said the presi dent's a coward," he was told.

But who specifically said that? "You," the man told Jennings. The anchor in fact had been criticized for pointedly questioning President Bush's whereabouts in the early hours after the Sept. 11 attacks. He never came close to calling him a coward, though. And the man had no rebuttal after being told as much, Jennings said.

"Our conversation then got pretty drained away. But I wonder how he might have felt if we'd sat down and had a beer. My sense was that he was so angry about life that it might not have made any difference. But it would have been interesting to try" Vignettes such as these illustrate the gulf between media stars and people who have un- Peter Jennings suite. Just two days after New York City was rocked anew by the crash of American Airlines Flight 587, Jennings decided to proceed as planned with a meet-the-people excursion tied to his upcoming book "America" and a companion TV series scheduled for next fall.

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The dinners are at 1 and 6 p.m. Sunday, and 6 p.m. Monday. The production is based on a student-written script titled "The Quest for Inspiration" and takes place at a Shakespearean holiday celebration hosted by the author and attended by his characters, including Macbeth, Iago and Oberon. The dinner involves more than 45 U-High.

students and features the Madrigal Singers and Court Singers, as well as brass, string and recorder ensembles. Call (309) 438-8052 for ticket information. Independent news company hiring Arnett to report ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW YORK Former CNN correspondent Peter Arnett has been hired by Broadcast News Networks, a New York-based independent news production company, to cover the war on terrorism. Arnett will contribute live and taped reports from the Afghanistan region to BNN's client stations across the United States and world. He will be chief correspondent of the company's CameraPlanet correspondents unit, a group of more than 40 reporters.

Arnett, who won a Pulitzer Prize reporting in Vietnam for The Associated Press, left CNN after 18 years in the wake of the "Tailwind" scandal. He was the correspondent for the June 1998 report that said the U.S. military used nerve gas in Laos, which was later retracted. Tabled Mchair it- jsi with minimum $800 purchase. IB 10 11 Through Nov.

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