Alexa Bennewitz has helped oversee special event coverage for CNN for 17 years, from the Barack Obama/Hillary Rodham Clinton Democratic primary debate in 2007 to Nelson Mandela’s funeral in 2013 to Pope Francis’ visit to the United States in 2015.
But now as CNN’s special director of special events, Bennewitz faces her biggest challenge to date overseeing logistics for Thursday’s high stakes debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump in Atlanta.
“We are in uncharted territory,” Bennewitz said Tuesday morning in the main courtyard of the Techwood Turner campus in Midtown Atlanta where the debate is set to take place. “Everyone is very aware of the jobs they have to do and the gravity of the situation.”
With the debate comes a renewed focus on Atlanta, at least in the days surrounding the event. With most major live CNN shows broadcasting from the Techwood Turner campus from Wednesday afternoon until at least Friday morning, it will be the longest stretch of consecutive live coverage out of Atlanta in at least 15 years.
For CNN, nabbing the debate last month was a major coup, a morale boost for a network that is recuperating from the mismanagement of a previous short-lived regime and continued ratings woes. This is also an obvious chance for CNN, now under the leadership of former New York Times and BBC chief Mark Thompson, to show it can smoothly execute a live news event.
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Atlanta was chosen in part because CNN’s core technical infrastructure is here, a legacy of founder Ted Turner, who built out the city as CNN’s headquarters. Georgia is also important to both candidates given its status as a swing state come November.
“There’s a lot of excitement here,” she said. “Everybody at CNN is proud to make this happen, especially being at Techwood. It’s pretty special.”
While Bennewitz is coming from Washington, D.C., her supervising producer Kara Manry works out of Atlanta and has been at CNN for 19 years since graduating from neighboring Georgia Tech. “This is a nice homecoming for all of us,” she said.
Credit: NIEL GALEN
Credit: NIEL GALEN
Credit: CNN
Credit: CNN
About 600 people are involved with the build out, a CNN spokeswoman said.
For the actual debate itself, CNN commandeered Studio D, normally home to the baseball show “MLB on TBS.” That show is on the road while the news network uses the space. “Viewers familiar with that show will not recognize it,” Bennewitz said.
As agreed upon by both candidates, there will be no live audience, which simplifies logistics and enables CNN to keep the number of people in that studio to a minimum.
The network declined to give The Atlanta Journal-Constitution access to the studio, but Bennewitz said they will be using the same set pieces as they have for past debates going back to the 2019 Democratic primary debates, including the moderator desk, podiums and video wall.
Since Sunday, she said the moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash have been in Atlanta rehearsing. CNN boss Thompson is also in town from New York City to oversee the debate, a spokeswoman said, but was unavailable to talk to the AJC.
The network is prepped for any potential technical issues. “We have redundancies across the board,” Bennewitz said. “Cameras. Microphones. The smallest details. We have a backup generator. And we have three flavors of transmission: fiber, internet and satellite.”
Given that these two men both carry hefty Secret Service entourages, security will be especially tight around the Turner Techwood campus on Thursday and CNN is recommending only essential employees show up to campus that day.
“CNN security is working with Secret Service, the Atlanta and Georgia state police departments, the Tech police force,” she said. “There will be a multiagency command center.”
CNN has also set up a space for media at nearby McCamish Pavilion on the Georgia Tech campus, where nearly 800 media representatives are credentialed from 64 cities, 173 different news outlets and 35 countries.
While CNN has been preparing for this debate for six weeks, the actual negotiations with the Biden and Trump camps took place over a span of just a few hours on May 15. The candidates also agreed to a second debate hosted by ABC News in September, dispensing with the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, which had been handling debates the past four decades but appears to be left out in the cold this go around.
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Ted Turner at CNN's launch June 1, 1980. CR; Joe Benton/AJC
Credit: Ted Turner at CNN's launch June 1, 1980. CR; Joe Benton/AJC
CNNers in Atlanta specifically wanted to highlight the Midtown campus so management agreed to build out a special outdoor “game day” stage in front of the main portico where Turner announced the launch of CNN in 1980.
“We had to bring in construction level ground protection to spread the weight of the set because of the parking garage underneath,” Bennewitz said.
Starting at 4 p.m. Wednesday with veteran anchor Wolf Blitzer until at least Friday morning, most major live CNN shows will air either on that outdoor stage or the special indoor studio that is currently used by Atlanta-based anchors Fredricka Whitfield and Victor Blackwell on weekends.
The network has also built out a set for CNN en Español and a set at the media/spin room center.
CNN over the past 15 years gradually moved its nexus of power to New York City but around 1,000 of its 4,000 employees still work in Atlanta.
The network recently moved its Atlanta-based operations from CNN Center downtown (since renamed The Center) after 37 years in that location, which for a time was a major tourist attraction. CNN actually started at Techwood but outgrew that space. AT&T, CNN’s former owner before it became Warner Bros. Discovery in 2022, sold CNN Center to two Florida real estate investment firms in 2021. The last CNN employee moved to Midtown this spring.
Unlike CNN Center, the current Techwood Turner campus is not open to the public.
Bennewitz has faith all the logistical pieces will fall into place on Thursday without any major hitches.
“We are all really calm,” she said. “We have some of the best people in the business. I wouldn’t want to do this anywhere else. It’s a lot of work and a long way to go but I couldn’t be happier with the team we have in place.”
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