Buckingham Palace is ignoring pleas from the American TV networks and turning off the palace lights after the royal wedding.
The lights that illuminate the façade of the royal residence are going to be switched off at 12:30 a.m. — just when prime-time coverage in the US is about to begin — the palace said yesterday.
Network news officials have been pleading with Buckingham Palace officials “for weeks” to keep the lights on all night so that they could use the palace as a backdrop for their recap specials following the wedding next Friday, says one American TV exec.
All the American networks have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in constructing special broadcast studios on the mall outside the palace, which will now be dark just as prime-time coverage is set to begin.
Officials at the royal residence had already agreed to extend the hours the lights stay on from 11 p.m. to 12:30 on the big night. But, yesterday, the palace informed the American networks that was as far as they’d go.
The lights would make it impossible for the staff who live in the royal residence to go to sleep, the palace said yesterday.
“We have tried to be as accommodating as possible,” a spokesman for the palace told a London paper. “There was a request to keep the lights on all night, but there’s nothing more we can do about that.
“There are residential concerns as well as environmental. We have staff living within the palace facing the mall. The decision won’t change,” the spokesman said.
Behind the scenes, network officials say they’re frustrated and disappointed that the palace won’t keep the lights on a little longer, and the search for alternatives is underway.
Most of the networks have set up temporary studio locations also outside Westminster Abbey — where the wedding ceremony will take place — says one network official who asked to remain anonymous.
“And they keep Westminster lit all night,” he said. “So we expect we’ll be at Buckingham Palace until they turn the lights off — and then switch over to Westminster Abbey after that.”