Behind “The Wall”…
The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi writes about CNN’s Video Wall technology…
The device will get its biggest workout of the election season tonight with the Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses — 24 states, hundreds of delegates and a river of numbers.
“It’s a stupendous way to explain a lot of complicated data,” says David Bohrman, chief producer of CNN’s political coverage. “Fundamentally, our job is to explain things to people, and we need to do it visually. This lets us do it naturally, without a keyboard or mouse getting in the way.”
CNN has been counting on The Wall to add a little sizzle to its election coverage, typically a visually dry TV-news account. The cable network first deployed The Wall in early January for the Iowa caucuses and has used it for every primary contest since. CNN eventually plans to employ the device for other types of coverage.
Bohrman spotted The Wall last fall while trawling the aisles of a Texas trade show for government and military-intelligence contractors. A demonstration, he said, “stopped me in my tracks. Once you see it, you get it instantly.”
I have watched CNN use this technology and I have to say that I like it a great deal when the different counties are being discussed in any given race….
Comment by Wenchie — February 5, 2008 @ 10:22 am