Austin360 blogs > TV Blog > Archives > 2008 > February > 06 > Entry
Dizzying graphics on Super Tuesday TV
Watching five hours of Super Tuesday coverage last night — and flipping among eight channels — left me dizzy and more than a little grumpy. If it’s possible for TV to cause attention-deficit disorder, I think I’ve caught it. I was having trouble focusing on my toothbrush this morning.
Complaints? I’ve got a few, and mostly they have to do with the overload of graphics. Cable news, not surprisingly, is the worst offender in this regard. CNN, MSNBC and Fox all seem determined to post every number and piece of information they have on hand. The result is info overload on the screen.
MSNBC looked pretty good at first, with just a couple of sleek bars at the bottom that stayed on for several seconds before switching to another state and set of returns. But not long into the evening, MSNBC added a big-fat sidebar on the left part of the screen. So there was changing info — maps, stats and photos — on the side and the bottom of the main screen.
Fox News Channel’s graphics also were exceedingly annoying. Not only were there too many lines of information (I counted six stacked lines in the “crawl” at the bottom of the screen at one point), but most of them moved constantly, with two tickers moving at different speeds and different intervals. Who can digest this much stuff?
CNN occasionally stacked its graphics, but most of the night their results crawls were easy to read and, thank heavens, mostly static.
ABC — with the comfy anchoring trio of Charles Gibson, Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos — seemed to be on top of breaking news and more or less enjoying the evening. ABC made a singular mistake adding its regular (nonelection) news crawl to the bottom of the graphic election info. And the network was pretty slow in projecting winners. But otherwise, ABC News, which turned over all of its primetime slate to election coverage, performed well.
CBS News, with anchor Katie Couric flanked by a bunch of aging men in suits, just seemed bemused. She and Jeff Greenfield made a lot of old-age jokes about Bob Schieffer, and the network did have big, easy-to-read graphics. But I’m just not seeing Katie’s gravitas in these breaking news situations.
NBC, which had no primary coverage until 9 p.m., came too late and never caught up. Brian Williams is a perfectly capable anchor, but by the time NBC got on the air, my remote-pushing finger was weakening.
I know I’ll get howls of protest over this, but, seriously, watching Fox News, you’d think the only primaries happening last night were on the Republican side. I timed the “fair and balanced” network for Repub vs. Dem for an hour, and the Republican races got more than twice as much time than the Dems.
Maybe Fox just wanted to give new analyst Karl Rove a showcase. One other nit: Does anybody else think the normally bright and energetic Brit Hume looked terribly bored and bummed last night? His heart just wasn’t into to it. He droned and frowned and just seemed desperately in need of vitamins … or something.
But the quick-projection award does go to Fox. They came out early and correct on all the races I saw (I shut down at 11 p.m., by the way). For some reason, CNN’s projections often came as much as a half-hour behind Fox. And ABC was surprisingly slow, too — although I’m sure the slow projectors will prefer to be called “cautious.”
All this flipping has left me with fuzzy vision, stew for brains and a wiggly index finger. Too much information, too much talking, just too-too much Super Tuesday. ‘Til next time …
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By gdub
February 10, 2008 1:42 PM | Link to this
CNN's new HD channel has more graphics. They had pie charts and numbers in columns down either side of the screen that are cut off on a regular TV. Problem is, at least on Time Warner at my house, the HD image is too wide and about half of the extra stuff was cut off of my HDTV, too.
And it's not just this channel. I think Time Warner's HD broadcasts all have this problem. You get network logos cut off, etc. — it just usually doesn't matter as much because there's not usually content built in that specific area like CNN did.
By King
February 6, 2008 11:13 AM | Link to this
This is why I watch PBS. If I want charts of numbers I go to the web. I want "inside voice" commentary and analysis from people representing all points of view. That's hard to find on any network.
w.r.t. Fox, that's no surprise is it? They're just giving their viewers what they want. It isn't like anybody watching FoxNews is interested in any Democratic race. ;-)