MSNBC simulates D-day coverage

Television viewers may get a peculiar sense of time warp if they tune in to MSNBC at 5 p.m. today or 1 p.m. Sunday.

For two hours, MSNBC’s reporters and anchors will simulate how D-day might have been covered if modern technology were in place in 2004.

Reporters will be stationed in France, Washington, London and elsewhere. Military experts will pore over maps in the studio and attempt to explain what is happening. Someone “embedded” with the troops landing on the beaches of Normandy will report via satellite phone on what is “happening.” They will follow the type of restrictions familiar to people who watched the Iraq war coverage: not revealing precise locations and not showing injured or dead Americans, said Bruce Perlmutter, executive producer of the broadcast.