TV Coverage Report (Of those I watched)

[cthulu2016]

First, there was tremendous variation in when networks called what. PBS radio had their call of Wisconsin putting Obama over the top while CBS had called Wisconsin more than an hour earlier. Fox called Minnesota way before NBC, NBC called Virginia well before Fox... so flipping round none of the networks had the same EV totals.

FOX was the first to acknowledge that Romney lost, but without saying so. It was weird. By 8 PM on they were talking about why this happened. The whole night was a gloomy affair.

MSNBC was... not so good. I love what Rachel and Tweety have to say, but there is no point doing analysis of something that hasn't happened yet. Election night is for news, which means numbers and maps, and MSNBC wasn't strong on that stuff—partly because the numbers and calls are done on the NBC side. Chuck Todd was as good as Chuck Todd is likely to get, but it wasn't the place to be to be best informed.

CBS was gloomy as hell. Dark and quiet. They introduced a "leaning" category so they could talk about Obama's second term hours before calling the election.

ABC was monstrous... it felt like a morning couch-chat show with Diane Sawyer saying a lot of nothing and Stephanopulous trying to nod along.

Fox broadcast with Shepard Smith was better than Fox cable, but was cheap-looking.

CNN was the only network that I saw that did a good job of covering the election. Fox was deceptive about the outstanding vote in the swing states. Chuck Todd told the general story of the outstanding vote well enough. But John King showed you down to the percent and the district why the swing states were going to do what was about to happen. Very good election map technology. It was ironic—King really made the case for why these states were going to fall to Obama, but CNN was super conservative in calling states so you knew earliest, but not officially.

Wolf Blitzer is an embarrassing bozo, of course. He made a crazy speech about how we should mark the time, 11:18, when Obama was re-elected. But he had been re-elected on NBC for about ten minutes already, and on Fox had been elected for about five minutes.

[WinkyDink]

1. I thought Rachel Maddow was darn good.

[cthulu2016]

2. I loved her, but the coverage was thin on news and numbers

[go west young man]

3. I thought Rachel did a great job on MSNBC.

She had a progressive approach to it. She led the conversations well. Called the states as they came in. Todd was a bit weird as usual but he was basically laying out what they already knew. I try not to watch Blitzer and CNN it gets on my nerves and it's quite boring as they are so predictable in their lingo and way of being. They're old hat. If Olberman were back he would of made the MSNBC show the best.