Royal wedding coverage: Prince William and Kate Middleton’s big day captivates every major network

Hair up, or hair down, the anchors on CNN were wondering, moments before Kate Middleton emerged on camera for the first time Friday morning.

This was early, way early for Americans to be up and watching TV, let alone a wedding on the other side of the pond, but there we were, hanging on every moment.

“We were told it would be hair down, I don’t know why we even know that,” CNN’s Anderson Cooper said.

He was right.

Why would anyone know that, or care? But for several hours Friday morning, they did, and viewers had few other options but the wedding if they turned their TVs on. It was all Royal Wedding, all the time, sans for a few channels offering infomercials and old movies.

Coverage began overnight on some networks, with others picking up full-on at 4 a.m. as the Royals began the first Wedding of the Century.

Over the course of multiple hours, we learned about Royal traditions, music, dress choices and more.

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The coverage rivaled the best of Super Bowl Sunday, when networks fill hours with fluff leading up to the game itself. Here, the game was the wedding, and this cute young couple was the Super Bowl.

Barbara Walters, working ABC‘s coverage, said, “Maybe this is the year of the commoners,” after noting even the Prince of Denmark was married to, eegads, a marketing executive.

The horror!

Matt Lauer alerted “Today” show viewers that when Middleton emerged for the ride to the wedding NBC had two, count them, two fashion experts ready to dissect the threads.

“We’re going to see Kate for a nanosecond as she enters Westminster Abbey,” Katie Couric said on CBS.

“Every mother dreams of this,” Robin Roberts said on ABC. “I think the thing we need to do is we have to strip away all of this — this is a wedding.”

Well, sort of. If they stripped away everything, no one would watch any old wedding.

THE ROYAL WEDDING - IN PHOTOS!

And surely, as the event unfolded, financially-challenged families everywhere began the process of telling their young daughters that this was absolutely not the way to have a wedding.

Even Piers Morgan, a steady hand during CNN’s coverage, noted he was excited about the dress.

“She looks utterly radiant,” he said as she got into the car to head to the Abbey.

Fox News anchors Martha MacCallum and Shepard Smith covering the Royal Wedding.

Given the extent of the coverage, spanning from CBS, to Univision, and many others in between, it’s no wonder that even second, or third-rate experts, were dragged into the coverage.

TLC called on Ivana Trump to weigh in on the wedding, while CNN’s sassy cousin HLN pulled out Lisa Vanderpump, best known as being part of Bravo‘s “Real Housewives” cheesefest franchise.

Once the ceremony began in earnest, most of the networks let the event carry the moment. Well, all by CBS, which couldn’t stop Couric from jumping in to let viewers know she was still around.

HLN‘s Robin Meade at one point during the ceremony shifted to giving viewers regular news, but not before letting Vanderpump note that she’d correctly guessed some of the key details of Kate’s dress.

Oh joy.

After the ceremony, and the kiss - Oh, the Kiss, also analyzed to death — key parts were replayed, and discussed, again.

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“The kisses are coming up,” Walters said on ABC, as they were planning to to rerun it.

“It appears not everyone was impressed with the double kiss,” David Muir said on ABC.

“It was a very different feeling than what we felt with Princess Diana and Prince Charles, which was very stiff,” Fox News’ Martha MacCallum said. “This was Royal in really the best way.”

CNN’s Morgan noted it was a good day in London, a good day for Royals and for the married couple.

“In Kate Middleton, we have a new star,” Morgan said.

“He looked like a movie star, an ‘Officer and a Gentleman’ character,” Morgan noted, “and she looked like one of the most beautiful brides ever.”

Oh, yes, and that was probably because her hair was, indeed, down.

rhuff@nydailynews.com