I only caught it once but CNN appears to be trying out some real time 3D virtual technology tonight with pie charts. I’m trying to get video uplodaed but I fear YouTube ain’t liking what I sent it because it’s taking forever to get 12 seconds processed. If anyone else can get video of that posted, email me…

Update: I give up. Here are two stills showing the 3D pie chart which is apparently aligned via computer to the graphic sign Cooper is holding.

As the sign is rotated, the 3D pie chart rotates with it.

Things got a bit heated between Chris Wallace and Ed Rollins. (video via Johnny Dollar)

Watching the differing graphical approaches taken by the three networks is striking. Both CNN and FNC have the results in their expanded lower thirds. CNN’s stay on during commercials. MSNBC has opted to periodically flash a big board showing three of the candidates from each party at a time with pictures of each and the results.

Of the dueling lower thirds on CNN and FNC, I think I prefer FNC’s because it’s more easily legible and it just plain looks better to me. CNN seems to have taken an approach more along the lines of something you might see on CNN International. I think the all white (or off white) background with the black text, plus the cluttered layout; with only a relatively small percentage of the screen being devoted to the candidate names and their standing and a pie chart in the lower right corner, a bit too cluttered for my tastes.

I don’t think I can compare MSNBC’s approach to FNC or CNN’s because it’s fundamentally different. It’s apples and oranges. It’s the classic “old school” style that you would see on the broadcast networks. I do like that the photos are included though.

What do you think?

Power hasn’t gone out but I forgot the pounding rain interferes with the old satellite dish. In any case, now I see that the nets have called the caucuses for Huckabee and Obama.

Update: FNC called Huckabee first at 8:53 pm. CNN called it at 8:57

8:30 pm - CNN is giving early numbers on the caucuses. FNC is showing “entrance poll” results which suggest wins for Huckabee and Obama. CNN is talking about the demographic breakdown of its entrance polls.

8:37 pm - MSNBC is showing early results as well. Olbermann:

There are really four races playing out this evening in each party. One group fighting for first. And one group is fighting for, “Hey, look how I didn’t suck so badly!”

So true…

USA Today’s Mark Memmott and Jill Lawrence write about Chris Dodd’s appearance with FNC’s Chris Wallace…

Only three or four Democrats will get “tickets” out of Iowa that clearly let them stay in the presidential race, Sen. Christopher Dodd told Fox News Channel’s Chris Wallace this afternoon. And if he isn’t among those three or four top finishers — or does well enough to be perceived as having been among three or four who pulled off surprisingly strong finishes — he could be out of the race as soon as tomorrow.

Here’s what Dodd said when Wallace asked about what needs to happen at tonight’s caucuses in order for him to continue on.

“As we have learned over the years, it’s a unique situation here,” Dodd said, according to a transcript sent to us by Fox. “People actually stand up in peoples’ homes or in a cafeteria or library and they have to publicly declare who they are for. We have a very good organization in the state. We have people working very hard. I think there are three — maybe four — tickets out of Iowa and if we don’t get one of those three or four, at least in my case, I’ll be heading back (home) to Hartford tomorrow morning. And if I get one of those four tickets, I have a plane waiting to take me to Manchester, N.H. tonight.”

The New York Observer’s Zachary Roth tries to catch Phil Griffin in a contradiction. And fails. Here’s Roth’s evidence…

Mr. Griffin told the paper: “Keith was doing this show before it was popular to beat up on this president or to beat up on this war … Because of his point of view and the ‘Special Comments,’ people think this is our strategy. This isn’t a strategy. This is Keith.”

But two months ago, The Times reported:

Riding a ratings wave from “Countdown With Keith Olbermann,” a program that takes strong issue with the Bush administration, MSNBC is increasingly seeking to showcase its nighttime lineup as a welcome haven for viewers of a similar mind.

What Roth fails to note is that in the Times piece Griffin is on record saying exactly the same thing he told the Houston Chronicle today…
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In a half hour at 8pm, all the cable nets will go wall to wall on the Iowa caucuses. Call me cynical (and I am cynical) but I expect not a lot out of this until later on when the numbers start rolling in. In the meantime we can expect lots of people talking about what might happen and what could happen but not a lot about what has happened because it hasn’t happened yet. It’s a case of the nets having to keep viewers interested until there’s some actual news to report.

Post your reactions of the coverage of the nets’ coverage here…

FNC has had their A talent all over Iowa for the caucuses. Shepard Smith was interviewing Mike Huckabee. Tonight Special Report with Brit Hume will also feature Mike Huckabee as well as Mitt Romney. Later tonight Hannity & Colmes will have Dennis Kucinich and Rudolph Giuliani.

I’m adding numbers for Midnight as both CNN and FNC were still live at that hour…

Daily Live+SD Ratings for December 31, 2007

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Chris Wallace talk to Edwards’ Communications Director about Edwards’ “FNC boycott”. Setting aside for the moment the fact that his Communications Director is violating his campaign’s own boycott, Wallace really nails him on the subject…(video via Johnny Dollar)

Tucker and Pat Buchanan talk Ron Paul (and Buchanan brings up the FNC forum)

TMC.net’s Anshu Shrivastava writes about FNC entering the Indian Mobile spave via the PLUS portal…

Intially, Fox News Channel plans to offer real time news in the form of full-length stories in text along with graphs and images and later on it is planning to introduce short video content.

“PLUS will bring tailor-made short video content from Fox News like ‘Around the world in 70 seconds’ and business and sports wrap up, which will provide a comprehensive summary of news developments,” Viren Popli, senior vice-president at SME, told the press.

Popli added that cell phones, being the most convenient platform, makes this offering the best choice for Fox News Channel and The Sun.

At the top of the Noon hour MSNBC seemed to have a problem resuming its live broadcast. It started with them running a Chris Matthews promo which is standard procedure (they always end their break at the top of the hour with some sort of promo). Then the screen went to black and stayed that way for about 20 seconds. Then up popped a promo for Joe Scarborough. This was followed by a promo for Weather Plus which I had never seen before. Then they repeated the same Joe Scarborough promo again. Then they finally went back to Live coverage…

I don’t usually comment on the daily ratings anymore but what on earth was CNBC airing Sunday that caused their ratings to spike like that? I can’t remember anything out of the ordinary off the top of my head…

Daily Live+SD Ratings for Saturday, December 29

Daily Live+SD Ratings for Sunday, December 30
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TV Newser notes that today MSNBC’s Iowa Caucus coverage will be streamed live on NBC’s News 2 Go’s mobile platform.

News 2 Go will take the closing bell of the markets at 4pmET, then stay with MSNBC election coverage until 1amET.

This makes NBC the only network offering live day long political coverage on cell phones.

Update: TVNewser was in error. FNC streams its coverage on cell phones…

Update 2: The Next Great Thing blogs about who is streaming what…

The New York Times’ Kim Severson asked several people if they could go fly anywhere in the world to eat, where would it be? One of those was CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta…

“My family is from northern India, so while I love all Indian food, I have a special place in my heart for Northern cuisine. Most of my favorite places to eat in New Delhi are literally there one day, and gone the next – little carts on the side of the road. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “Delhi belly!” So, on the few occasions when we put on a nice Kurta shirt, I like to go to Bukhara, in central Delhi. The cuisine is described as “northwestern frontier” Indian, which is a style that focuses on a clay oven, called a tandoor. Where Bukhara really distinguishes itself is with a relatively simple dish: dal. It’s black lentils with tomatoes, ginger and garlic.”

DCRTV notes that Tammy Haddad will be doing a series of election specials for XM Satellite radio…

Update: TVWeek’s Michele Greppi has more…

MSNBC’s former chief political producer Tammy Haddad will launch a series of political specials on XM Satellite Radio’s POTUS ’08 channel. The show will premiere Thursday at 6 p.m., with a guest lineup that includes “Meet the Press” moderator Tim Russert, originating from Iowa against the backdrop of Thursday’s presidential caucuses.

Also booked for the first installment of “High-Definition Politics With Tammy Haddad” are David Bohrman, CNN’s Washington bureau chief and overseer of the news network’s political coverage; Bob Shrum, adviser for Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign and former VP Al Gore’s presidential campaign adviser in 2000; and Alex Castellanos, senior media adviser to GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

The Des Moines Register’s Ken Fuson and Ried Forgrave write about Mika Brzezinski’s nightmare trip to Des Moines…

“For the first time in 15 years, I checked my luggage, and my bag was on the plane,” she said. “I was told to go to baggage claim to get it.”

It wasn’t there. And her bag contained all of her clothes for the Des Moines trip, as well as all of her research papers.

She and Licht rented a sport utility vehicle to drive to Des Moines.

The “check engine” light came on. They rented a different vehicle. Then they drove through a snowstorm.

“At one point, I thought we were never going to make it,” Brzezinski said.

The Houston Chronicle’s David Barron profiles Keith Olbermann…

As Olbermann has learned to channel his emotions, he also has learned to manage his career. After jumping from ESPN to Fox to NBC, leaving bruised feelings along the way after departing his first two employers, he seems to be comfortable at NBC, and NBC is comfortable with him as well.

“I often go to that very familiar place that says ‘I want to do this and I’ve got to get out of here and do this,’ and there’s nothing that’s sitting here,” he said. “This is the first time I’ve had the opportunity to go somewhere else and wound up staying in the same place in the same job.”

Phil Griffin, who supervises MSNBC’s prime-time lineup as a senior vice president of NBC News, describes Olbermann as the network’s “tentpole” but rejects the notion that MSNBC has used his show and others as part of a deliberately more contrarian tone toward the Bush administration as an alternative to Fox News Channel.

“Keith was doing this show before it was popular to beat up on this president or to beat up on this war,” Griffin said. “Because of his point of view and the ‘Special Comments,’ people think this is our strategy. This isn’t a strategy. This is Keith.
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The New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin writes about The Weather Channel being put up for sale and the who’s who of suitors lining up to buy it…

The channel is also a godsend for advertisers. Like live sports, it is largely immune from TiVos and other digital video recorders. The channel has 800 employees; 125 are meteorologists.

Perhaps more appealing for some big media companies may be the Weather Channel’s Web business, which was started in 1995. Weather.com ranks as the nation’s 18th-largest media site by traffic, with more than 32 million unique users in November, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. That is bigger than CNN and Facebook.

Weather.com has partnerships with dozens of big media companies. In October, the site struck a deal to provide forecasts to MySpace, a unit of the News Corporation. The company also has deals with Yahoo and AOL.

Among the Weather Channel’s suitors, NBC is expected to compete aggressively, people involved in the auction said. NBC has a weather-related unit called NBC Weather Plus, a joint project of NBC News and NBC affiliates, but the venture has never taken off. NBC Weather Plus includes a cable channel, frequently available only on digital cable platforms and high on the dial, along with a Web site, weatherplus.com.
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