Christian the lion: TV superstar

Who would have thought one little lion reunion would generate such conspiracy theories?

That “YouTube” sensation of Christian the Lion and his keepers has now become a television sensation after it appeared on Today, The Morning Show, TEN News At Five and Mornings with Kerri-Anne. For the record, only KAK had an actual interview with the two men (you can watch that here), John Rendall and Ace Bourke, who were in Sydney for a Taronga Zoo event. Most others simply re-ran the YouTube clip complete with Whitney Houston’s warbling vocals.

But they were also interviewed on the NBC Today Show on the roof of the Four Seasons Hotel. That was enough for Today Tonight to give the story a second whirl last night, this time with a complementary interview from a Taronga lion supervisor, and by cleverly lifting the audio from NBC and replaying it over the video of the YouTube clip once more.

It’s odd they didn’t run the actual NBC interview given they have re-broadcast rights and given you could even hear the NBC host Meredith Vieira laughing.

Despite the background noise from the (uncredited) NBC audio it was good enough to use.

In fact it was better than the audio echo we heard from Anna Coren in her Beijing TT studio last night.