TVSquad

FOX NEWS - AMERICA'S ELECTION HQ. Not dramatic enough? Maybe we could spruce it up a bit. "Fox News - For Election Coverage that's Guaranteed Right!" Even some of their analysts were reluctant to think that the country could go to the left of center.

Fox News Channel is a part of the new media, running streams of election data along the bottom, including a static corner box tracking projected electoral votes. We get two different bits of election data next to that, changing about every 7 seconds. Above that is an Alert bar with text data "Fox News Projects John McCain has won Kentucky." And, of course, they kept it scrolling through the commercials, too.

At least so far, the panel seems set to discuss how the Republican party is going to respond to their predicted losses and emphasizing Obama's need to reach across party lines and be bipartisan. If the network wants to lose the stigma of being of offering right-slanting news coverage, this may not be the best way to do so.

Not only is Megyn Kelly in love with her fancy touchscreen, as I'm guessing all networks are, but she took special time just to show it off. "Look at this thing ... look at the size of this," she told Brit. "Megyn, it confirms it. You are really, really important," he responded. That's what the focus is? I wonder if it's in her contract that even when showing the data on her gigantic screen, she still has to be in the shot. Maybe that's why they went with the angle shot. "Show me! Show me! Show me!"

• Carl Cameron was their correspondent covering the McCain rally site. Have you ever seen someone pretending to be a newscaster, over-enunciating and overemphasizing what they say? He was like that excited kid on a high school news report trying to be professional, but to excited to pull it off. I guess since NO ONE WAS THERE, he had to be excited enough for an entire rally.
  
• Fox News admitted that while other news organizations had called Pennsylvania they didn't want to because there were no precincts reporting. If there are no precincts reporting, how can other news organizations call anything? Did they just get a feeling? Is Miss Cleo there?
• Brit likes to put his reading glasses on from time to time to look thoughtful or grandfatherly.
  
• At one point the map said 103-39 while the bottom corner said 103-45. Maybe you have too much information in too many places if you can't keep your figures straight in all your data locations. Can we go back to chalkboards. There's such a thing as too much information.
• "John Kerry has won ... Uh, that's Hoogendyk ... wait, did a guy just run behind me? Please tell me he wasn't naked." Nicely done, boys. Nicely done. And this contiued through the first couple of hours of coverage with the wrong graphics coming up and people running around everywhere. The latter might be an attempt to look busy. "Run this pile of papers over there, hand it to Steve and have him run back."
  
• Brit's clearly never worked with weathermen as he was in complete and total awe of the green screen technology in use. "Wow, so that's just green to you but we see all those cool graphics and colors? AMAZING! I have a blue pen." Later he was rolling around the set. Maybe Brit is losing his mind.
  
• Really? They're just showing us the states now for which ones have polls closing? No data, just a picture of the state.
• It's nice to see John Madden getting involved in politics, circling the electoral votes and manually counting down the seconds until the polls close.

As we close our first look at Fox News's election coverage, Fox News Channel appears to have all but called it for Obama already. Here we are at only 9:30/8:30 Central and even McCain's campaign advisor is talking about him in the past tense like it's all over. Will people on the West Coast just not bother to vote now? Will it be an early night for us all, with final results in before votes are even tallied. Can we just ask Miss Cleo and go to bed?