God bless Natalie

Over the weekend she had this striped shirt and you totally could see her little belly. I was certain she was pregnant, but then didn’t see anything online so I figured it was just the top that made her look that way. Glad she announced!

I love Natalie on “Today”! Congratulations to the family!

i guess i can understand that… but i just remember even our local weather woman on our nbc affiliate just recently had a baby…. and they didn’t really say anything about it till she was about to give birth… and it was really crazy, because she’s a naturally thin girl, and she was CLEARLY preggers by 6 or 7 months… she’d wear heavy coats (it’s minnesota, and they do the weather from outside…)

i guess cuz i’m a baby enthusiast (unfortunately not a mother) i want all the stories to be about the baby… (hahahahahaha)

Wow, congrats to Natalie and her family!! I stayed home sick from school the other day and was watching the Today Show, and I was actually thinking that she looked really skinny, but I guess I was wrong!

Fay, as someone who worked on-camera in television news, I can tell you that from my experience (and those I know in the industry), in local news, pregnancy is celebrated. I know women of different television markets (the area your station broadcasts to, and how many people it can reach) who announced their pregnancies shortly after the first trimester, and there was never an effort to cover up. Even the scandalous pregnancies were celebrated by the station.

But since Natalie, Soledad, Janice and Giada are on national news, their rules are a little different. As you may know, stations and networks are dominated by ratings: the more viewers you have, the more money your station/network (and ultimately, you)makes.
Depending on your market and station, you can have “sweeps” or ratings periods five or six months of the year. February, May, July, and November are the universal months. These are the months when a station/network really makes the push to gain and maintain viewers. During this time, it is essential for stations/networks to have the best stories, and best personalities.

Viewers are very vocal about the stories they want to hear, and the people they want to see. The Today show has a marginal lead as the number one morning show. Remove one of its elements, and it can fall to two or three. Management is counting how many of their faces will be gone during sweeps months, and how that will affect their newscast. I can tell you that if Natalie and Ann were gone from one episode of the Today show, I’d change channels. If Natalie is gone an entire month, and she was the main reason I’d watch the show, then I wouldn’t tune in that month. And if it’s a sweeps month, your station/network just lost money. If management is involved with the broadcast, the framing of shots may have been changed as a way to stop reminding viewers that someone is pregnant and will be on maternity leave; try to put off the inevitable for as long as possible. But I doubt this is the case, because they won’t be concerned about the woman being pregnant, they’re concerned about how long, and when, she’ll be gone.

There are several reasons why Janice could have been hunched over, and shots of Soledad were only of her shoulders. First and foremost, their comfort levels. Janice may have felt self conscious, cold, not ready to reveal her pregnancy or maybe that’s how she always sits/stands. For Soledad, one-shots are generally from the bust up, male or female. As established on-camera talent, she also has the clout to call the shots she wants. So if she thinks she looks best with shots of her from shoulder up (and the News Director is fine with it), then that is how she’ll be framed. And there could have been a day when she was pregnant that she may have felt less than her best, and didn’t want her body framed, especially when tens of millions of people are looking at her.

So to make a long answer short, being pregnant isn’t taboo per se in the industry, it can just make things more challenging for your station/network. But as long as the woman has a healthy pregnancy and baby, who cares what she puts her station/network through. Some things are more important than work.

Sorry for such a long reply, but I hope it helped clarify a few things. If not, I’ll try my best to answer any thing else. =)

It’s fantastic news!! Morales is due Sept. 16 Video from NBC here. She is looking amazing!:)Love her!

They don’t really try to hide it to me. She is still early on in her pregnancy and you normally wait until after the first trimester to really announce anything especially for a celebrity. I wouldn’t want to announce it at only at month along then a miscarriage were to unfortuntely happen and you have to deal with that in the public eye.

fay….Janice Lieberman is pregnant. They talked about it in a segment recently.