“Executives in the newsroom at NBC were left red-faced after scrambling their news teams to report on the story of a naked man abseiling down from Buckingham Palace — without realising it was a clip from their own show,” The Royals, starring Elizabeth Hurley, which airs on E!, owned by NBC-Universal:
And as part of the filming, producers staged what was made to look like a man escaping from a Buckingham Palace window. The shaky mobile phone footage was uploaded onto YouTube and quickly went viral. News reporters from NBC News were then asked to call Buckingham Palace press office and ask whether the footage was genuine.
The cleverly-edited clip, entitled “Crazy Buckingham Palace naked man video!!!”, has been watched over 1.7 million times.
“It was a genius press campaign and it tricked even NBC News,” said a staff member on The Royals.
Which seems appropriate from a karma perspective, considering the lengths NBC will go to trick its own audience.
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(Unless the whole thing is a ginned-up publicity stunt to get the show’s brand name out into social media, of course.)
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