Super Tuesday: Behind the Scenes at FNC’s Decision Desk…
TV Guide’s Stephen Battaglio writes about the FNC Decision Desk during Super Tuesday…
For viewers, Super Tuesday was a dizzying night of spinning graphics, graphs and maps. But it would mean nothing without the number crunchers who sift through the exit polls and the vote count. TV Guide took a seat at the Fox News “decision desk” as the results rolled in to get a feel for how the electoral sausage gets made.
6:30 p.m. The Fox decision desk team includes academics, a pollster, a veteran election results analyst, and Fox News senior vice president John Moody who’ll make the final determination on when anchor Brit Hume will call a race. The polls are still open, but the team is already poring over exit poll numbers from the research firm that provides them to all of the networks. But instead of being holed up in a back room, they are smack in the middle of the news channel’s Super Tuesday set — a mix of lucite, steel and plasma TV screens that could serve as the set for a futuristic musical stage production. The team, who look they like belong in a university mathematics department, seem a bit out of place in the high gloss production. But that’s the point, says Fox News vice president David Rhodes. “We thought the best way to deal with this issue is maximum transparency — to put as much of this process as possible on camera to demystify it. Let the viewers see a journalistic and academic process.”
any way you slice nit, Fox did a good job. I can Olberidiot now….
Comment by media guy — February 7, 2008 @ 7:52 am
Sorry for the typos
any way you slice it, fox did a good job—I can hear Olberidiot now… (that’s for the spell police)
Comment by media guy — February 7, 2008 @ 7:54 am
I agree…Overall I think Fox did the best…But I appreciate John King and his ability to explain why a state is playing out the way it is and show the viewers with the “Wall”
Thank goodness my TV set has PIP….
Comment by wenchie — February 7, 2008 @ 9:35 am
I loved John King’s “Wall” when I first saw it, but lately I’ve been glued to FNC. The graphics and graphs that they had up on Super Tuesday were about as good as it gets.
Comment by Buck — February 7, 2008 @ 3:23 pm