November 5th, 2008 
joel Some moments to remember from the media’s coverage of the historic Election in 2008.
NBC calls Pennsylvania for Obama
The call for Ohio, making it nearly impossible for McCain to win
Watch CBS Videos Online
CBS News calls the election for Obama
Oprah says “America did the right thing”
Cheering outside the White House
McCain concedes
Watch CBS Videos Online
Obama’s victory speech
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Can we talk about local election coverage. Asside from the occassional wrong camera taken on the air, it was uneventful, except for the poor quality of both WSEE and WICU’s “live” shots.
Could someone buy the WICU crews a light kit for Pete’s sake! The Ron DiNicola “live” shot was so poorly lit that Ron and John Rapola looked like twin sons of different mothers with their heavy beards. (although, Ron’s was a fashion statement)
Also, WSEE’s picture quality was suspect at best. We all know the election is upon us. Do these operatiions even test remote shot quality before the broadcasts?
I am glad that I am not the only one that noticed the absolutely dismal local election coverage here in Erie.
The quality of the local television coverage last night was embarrassing. And, although I am not a supporter of his, I am completely baffled as to why our local stations did not carry Obama’s historic speech live. The speech that our new president gave last night will be a speech that our grandchildrens’ children will learn about in school many many years from now. And we were stuck watching Kevin MacDowell holding up a handwritten sign on which the electoral count was written.
In addition to the broadcast media, the Internet was sorely lacking local results last night. Perhaps I didn’t look hard enough, but I went to GoErie only to find a live blog with no central location to get local results. ErieBlogs…same thing. WICU12.com, sure they had the scrolling bar on top, but I wasn’t about to wait for five minutes for it to reach the end of the list. WSEE….I can’t even visit their website because it is so hurtful to my eye. YourErie, although they were the only local website that I found that had a central place for local results (and for that I give them huge props), they always seemed a couple of steps behind.
It was a frustrating night for local election coverage to say the least. I was dismayed that my main option for local election coverage was in the form of live blogs. I didn’t appreciate that, while trying to find results, I had to sift through peoples negative and sometimes offensive comments, and poor attitudes. If I wanted to do that, I would have gone to Topix.
Oh well. Just my $0.02.
Dave:
I think I know why local news coverage was so bad. Each newsroom manager and their superiors have already spent the boatloads of cash dumped upon them by political campaign advertising. How much of that revenue do you think will go back into improving the quality of future election coverage let alone newsrooms?
Someone from the inside tell me just how many pre-game meetings and dry runs were done in preparation for this historic election night? Ah…the same number as my last question eh?
I worked major market news during the first Clinton campaign and we had countless dry runs and meetings before election night. Each live shot was tested (and every frezzie light Belt charged and actually used!).
Stu Nash and the students at McDowell put on a better product than our local stations (excluding WJET)
I thought CNN’s use of technology was impressive, especially the use of the touch screen board. The ability to zoom in and out of each county in each state was interesting.
I was also impressed by the 3-D Capitol Building they used. Anyone know what that technology is called?
I thought the “virtual view” hologram was borderline corny.
John:
NBC’s counter to CNN’s high-tech was of course the
national red and blue states map on the ice rink of Rockefeller Center!
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who noticed how poorly WICU and WSEE’s live shots were! Is this what we have to look forward to when Analog goes to Digital in february?????