The Hollywood Reporter’s Paul J. Gough writes about the hordes of newsies invading Iowa…

“You need folks at 30,000 feet, and you need folks on the ground,” NBC News political director Chuck Todd said. Williams, Russert and others will be on the ground for NBC; MSNBC will have anchors Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews in New York.

CNN will take a page from its 2006 playbook, using the Time Warner Center studio that it used to cover the midterm elections 18 months ago. That’s also where Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper and Lou Dobbs will be.

“It does not make sense for me to build entire broadcast operations in Iowa and New Hampshire,” said David Bohrman, CNN’s senior vp and Washington bureau chief. “Then where do you go for Super Tuesday, when it’s a national primary?”

CNN spent all of December, with only a few days off for Christmas and New Year’s, to build its set.

“We have all the right people here and much better graphics equipment here, video walls that bring in everything, and we’ve got the bus and other technologies and major reporters in Iowa and New Hampshire,” Bohrman said.

Fox News Channel takes a different approach. Brit Hume, Chris Wallace and its political team, along with others, will be on the ground in Iowa and New Hampshire.

“It’s important to have our anchors there,” “Fox News Sunday” executive producer Marty Ryan said. Fox News is putting its set in Iowa at the Polk County Convention Center, where both parties have their caucus-counting headquarters. In New Hampshire, Fox News built a special studio on the grounds of St. Anselm’s College in Manchester, N.H., where the programs and reporters will originate.