Kristen Welker’s Quest for ‘Meet the Press’ to Survive, and Thrive, In this Moment

Earthquakes usually happen on the west coast of the U.S., but this weekend's political earthquake was centered squarely in Iowa.

The Des Moines Register/Selzer poll that showed Vice President Kamala Harris leading former President Donald Trump sent shockwaves through the political world. And it caused NBC's Meet the Press to tear up some of its best laid plans.

"When I went to bed last night, I felt really great about where the panel was, and then I looked at it today, and some of those questions just had to change after Iowa," recalls Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker. "It is an ongoing process right up until we go to air. It's a living, breathing set of documents and interviews that we are constantly changing and tweaking right up until we go on ... the fact that we're a country that's very divided, we have a real responsibility, if there's breaking news, to make sure that we're putting it into context and to have that really tough conversation."

Sunday's edition of Meet the Press was no normal show. The program typically originates from NBC's new Washington D.C. bureau on Capitol Hill. But this was the final episode before Tuesday's election, so it was hosted in New York's 30 Rockefeller Plaza, on the same set where Lester Holt and Savannah Guthrie will lead election coverage this week.

The interviews with newsmakers (in this case Sen. Raphael Warnock and Gov. Doug Burgum) were shorter, the newsmaker panel (comprised of former MTP moderator Chuck Todd, former Mike Pence chief of staff Marc Short, MSNBC host Jen Psaki and Telemundo's Cristina Londoño Rooney) was talking exclusively about the election, and Steve Kornacki appeared for two segments to break down polls.

Far removed from Capitol Hill, Sunday's edition of the show was filmed in front of a green screen, with viewers at home instead seeing a photorealistic version of Rockefeller Center behind the anchor desk. Guests, including NBCUniversal News Group chairman Cesar Conde, observed from behind the cameras, many with cups of coffee in hand.

This episode was the Meet the Press' time to shine, a Sunday when all eyes were on politics, in a way that just isn't the case over many weekends. And it comes at an unusual moment for the media business writ large, with viewer attention fragmented into pieces, a slew of different platforms, and with political divisions as stark as they have been in most Americans' lifetimes.

It is a moment that Welker wants to meet.

"When Martha Rountree first conceived of this show — the first woman to moderate Meet the Press — it was as a public information program. And so that's our guiding principle every Sunday," Welker says, speaking with The Hollywood Reporter in a conference room at 30 Rock shortly after the program wrapped. "And I always go back to this conversation that I had with historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who says that our media landscape is as divided as it has been since the Civil War. That's the last time, as someone who has studied our nation's history, she can find a moment when our media landscape has been that divided. So the responsibility that we have every Sunday is enormous."

Sitting in the control room about an hour before air, Meet the Press executive producer David Gelles runs through the opening, featuring a voiceover from Welker as the iconic theme music plays, interspersed with clips from Donald Trump and Kamala Harris rallies leading up to the days prior to the show. The opening is a table-setter, but Gelles underscores that the clips they choose need to be relevant to the news at hand, not distractions based on what goes viral.

But the segment also sets up the whole show, framing the state of play, but also teeing up what Welker will ask the guests, both the newsmakers and the panelists.

"I produced every Tim Russert segment on the Today show for eight years, and I admired and thought of Tim as both a hero and idol," Gelles says. "Tim asked a question of George W Bush. He said, 'was the war in Iraq a war of choice or a war of necessity?' And I was like, wow, that's a good question. I like the simplicity of it. We have tried to apply those same principles in terms of looking back at old interviews to sort of study how to formulate good questions."

"Are viewers going to learn something? Are we asking the question in a way that's so open-ended we're not going to get any real answer?" Welker says. "And that, I think, is a great challenge, because you're dealing with people who are, you know, masters at answering questions in a way that they would like to answer the question"

"Or evading the question," Gelles interjects.

"How do we get an actual answer? How do we pin this person down? And that is our challenge every Sunday," Welker continues. "But we're constantly reviewing our work, so not only are we tweaking our product going into our broadcast every Sunday but we're constantly then seeing, what worked and what didn't, and how do we make this better."

Meet the Press has been defined for the past 77 years by its tough questions to newsmaking guests, questions that will "stand the test of time," as Welker says, well aware that there have been many moments from the program taught in history classes.

And Welker's willingness to be in the thick of it is a big reason why she has the job in the first place. Welker took over the program 14 months ago, succeeding Todd with a mandate to put her own stamp on the show.

"She's indefatigable. She's been a reporter. She knows what it's like to work hard to confirm a story," says Rebecca Blumenstein, president of editorial for NBC News . "She still does that, by the way. She has boundless energy. She's quite uniquely collaborative. She's also a booker in chief. She doesn't she doesn't leave things to other people. She really believes in the value of hard work, of getting the story, of getting the interview, and doing the work to get ready for it."

But Welker and Gelles have also made changes to the show, some subtle, some not, meant to reorient it to the media environment that is, not the one that was, or that some in TV news wish to be.

"I think this new challenge, in terms of this broken media landscape, is being accessible to a new audience of folks where this wasn't necessarily part of their tradition, because maybe linear television isn't part of their routine," Gelles says.

One of the big changes was adding a new segment called "Meet the Moment." The segment features the in-depth interviews that the show is known for, but focused on figures outside of politics, and that may appeal to an audience that is otherwise unlikely to tune in to the show. Michael Phelps and Ruby Bridges are among the guests that have appeared on the segment so far, which NBC News also releases as its own breakout full-length conversation.

"You can listen to all 45 minutes of the conversation with Michael Phelps, or you can watch the eight minute version on the linear broadcast, but we've made it accessible in a way of saying, this might be the way that we introduce the Meet the Press brand to a new generation, and maybe they'll come to us now, because they'll trust us a little bit more when it comes to election results," Gelles says. "We are stronger as a business than we were just a year ago when Kristen stepped into the moderator chair. And I think that we have now a real strategy in terms of reaching people in this broken media landscape and letting them Meet the Press brand continue to grow and thrive."

The show has also thought about how it clips its interviews for platforms like TikTok, where clips from an interview with Sen. JD Vance garnered nearly three million views.

It's a personal goal for both Welker and Gelles, who emphasize that they grew up professionally at NBC, Welker a former intern and Gelles an NBC page.

"I don't mean to sound cheesy, but we really in our hearts, feel so passionate about making sure that Meet the Press survives and thrives in this moment where there are so many diverse ways of people getting their news, which is a wonderful thing, and we want to be a part of that growth," Welker says.

But it also comes with clear eyes about the state of play, and an acknowledgement that the show is now part and parcel with the larger changes in how people get their political news, be it Welker's interview with former President Trump a year ago, or a news making conversation with a Harris surrogate.

Gelles notes that on Jan. 6, 2021, before the mob descended on the U.S. Capitol, Trump's first tweet of the day was a missive aimed at Todd.

"We understand that we have become part of the story in covering politics, and we're hyper, hyper aware of that, and but we've figured out that we can cut through the noise by continuing on this great tradition that Meet the Press stands for," Gelles says. "We have been on the air since television began, and we're still here. And the reason we're still here is, I think people really value what we do, that we have the tough conversations by bringing both sides together, we haven't stopped that mission.

"We were once called the 51st state by JFK, we are a vital part of our democracy," he adds.