Farewell, Tim Russert; Hello, Princess Leia

I sat down to watch the election coverage Tuesday night and was greeted by a hologram from Grant Park, and immediately went to MSNBC and FOX.

All I wanted from any network were the hard numbers and Chuck Todd/The pollster from FOX gave me those numbers with very good explanations of why they call states when they do. These two networks may wear their affiliations on their sleeves, but I don’t have to watch their sleeves and think that all these years after Star Wars nobody has been able to make a better looking hologram.

CNN’s use of techonology (don’t forget that box that Anderson Cooper controlled with his hands early in the primary season) reminds me of what my professors told me about using Powerpoint. To parapharse, it’s about the content. Cool transistions and graphics are nice, but people are interested in the content. With all the graphics CNN employed, I didn’t get any additional information.

Also, if your going to use these graphics, everyone should be proficient in using them. Watching Bill Schneider was like watching the bizarro Minority Report. It took hime like 5 tries to show the popular vote count. By the time he got around to speaking about latino women in Arizona, ten people that the precogs saw get killed 15 minutes ago are now dead.

Too much of the technology was used for its own sake, rather than for telling a story. the touch screen maps were great; the hologram and virtual capital just frosting. Makes one long for the days of the white board.

Also, I got very sick of CNN saying (pre-11 PM) “We’re not projecting anything… just saying THERE’S NO POSSIBLE WAY FOR MCCAIN to WIN.” OK, so what’s the difference, again?

I for one can’t wait for Anderson Cooper to have his next hologram interview with one of the Mars Rovers.

Rover: “1 0 1 1 0 1″
Anderson Cooper: “What’s that Rover? Timmy fell down a well?”

The mind reels at how news organizations might employ this technology in the future. Will we see holograms of reporters standing outside in hurricanes?
I think the reporters have to be filmed “in the field,” and then that image is projected into the studio. So you might see a reporter’s hair being windblown and wet in a studio, but you won’t see a perfectly coiffed one standing on a windswept quay. Unless he used several bottles of hairspray.

oops. sorry. forgot to end the itals.

[...] VII: A New Change-and-Hope may have been the most-mocked election-night broadcast, for its various Industrial Light and Magic effects, but that didn’t hurt it in the Nielsens. It drew over 12 million viewers during primetime, beating [...]

[...] Because as CNN so ably taught us: Princess Leia—never not funny. [...]