The Situation Room

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The Situation Room
The Situation Room
Genre	News Program Live Action
Running time	120 minutes (4 p.m. ET) 60 minutes (7 p.m. ET) 30 minutes (International Edition)
Starring	Wolf Blitzer and various contributors
Country of origin	USA
Original channel	CNN
Original run	August 8, 2005–Present
No. of episodes	Unknown

This article is about the CNN news program. For the room in the White House, see the White House Situation Room.

The Situation Room is an afternoon/early evening newscast on CNN hosted by Wolf Blitzer that first aired on August 8, 2005. At first, the newscast aired live from 3-6 p.m. ET and was subdivided into an hour devoted to politics, an hour devoted to security, and an hour devoted to international news. However, on November 2nd, 2005, CNN announced that The Situation Room would be chopped up: block 1 would air live from 4-6 p.m. ET, and block 2 would air live from 7-8 p.m. ET (taking over the timeslot held by Anderson Cooper 360).

A number of CNN journalists and pundits often join Blitzer, including Jack Cafferty, Ali Velshi, Carol Costello, Jacki Schechner, Abbi Tatton, Paul Begala, Bay Buchanan, James Carville, and J.C. Watts. The show replaces Inside Politics and Wolf Blitzer Reports. In the beginning of every show Wolf Blitzer starts by saying "Welcome to the Situation Room, where news and information from around the world arrive at one place simultaneously!" or "Welcome to the Situation Room, where news and information from around the world is arriving all the time!"

The show has garnered much criticism for covering human interest stories; notably devoting almost an hour of commercial free coverage to a story about a virus affecting their Windows 2000 computers. Much of this criticism comes from satirist Jon Stewart who has mocked the reporting of the show on multiple occasions, creating his own "hypothetical situation room." However, the show also earned critical praise for its multiple-screen coverage of Hurricane Katrina. Coincidentially, the show first aired mere weeks before it happened.

[edit] Trivia

Because of the show's usage of multiple video walls to convey events as they occur, two control rooms are used. One is exclusively used for the show itself, while the second is used to maintain content in the large eight-panel video wall.
The show also makes use of live RSS feeds that scroll in the background at various times during the show. Live video feeds are also commonly present in the show's format.
On August 23, 2006, during a live interview with "Wendy Hutchen", who supposedly knew John Mark Karr, stated "John told me he killed JonBenet because Howard Stern ordered him to do it." Obviously, it was a prank caller. This is not the first time CNN has been embarassed by a Howard Stern prank caller.