TVSquad

You might think it's surprising that 20/20 anchor John Stossel is leaving ABC for Fox, but it's not really much of shock. It seems to me that there have been other high profile names that were once considered liberal firebrands -- Geraldo Rivera and Dennis Miller come to mind -- who've grown older and changed their stripes, finding a home at Fox.

Stossel, whom I recall as a staunch consumer reporter and a man who liked to tear down hypocrisy at every turn, has been a regular at ABC News for nearly three decades. Now, he's moving on to Fox Business Network where he'll have a weekly show, and Fox News where he'll make frequent guest appearances.

Well, at 11:00p/10:00 Central, with the polls having just closed in California, Fox News Channel officially projected Barack Obama to win the presidency by taking California and jumping to 297 projected electoral votes. It was nice of them to make the projection exactly on the hour. Everyone likes a nice round number.

Then, the election panel said that no one could have predicted this even a year ago, but 24 predicted it seven years ago with President David Palmer. That's a sister station, Fox. Didn't you see it? This year they're saying they can see a woman president. Does that mean Clinton in four or eight years? Palin in four? Oprah?

Everyone's getting bored now. Megyn is running around talking to people all over the set and trying to make love to her "launchpad," while others are handing out cookies and snacks. When the election is turning into a landslide (which is how Fox News would have us think), I guess they're at a loss as to how to fill the time. "We booked the whole night for this coverage. Vamp! Vamp!" For more on why I love Fox News Election coverage, flip to the other side.

I think it's time to shake things up. Go crazy and call the whole election for McCain. Or even Nader. People will look back on it fondly and you'll be infamous in history. Just picture Brit Morgan's dour skull with the skin melting off looking at the camera with the words "McCain Projected to Win Presidency" below him. Legendary!

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.

Earlier this year I asked readers which network had "the best political team on television." CNN officially uses the line, but it doesn't mean it's true. Though I do have to say that I find myself watching CNN the most this election season because they truly do seem to go out of their way to be fair and bal...

OK, I won't say that exact phrase, but they do have a good mix of people, from Dems Paul Begala and Donna Brazille to Republicans William Bennett and Alex Castellanos, not to mention analysts like Gloria Borger and John King. It can get pretty unwieldy though, all those pundits spread across various tables. It's like that big World Series of Poker room mixed with a game show set, and if you have HD and can see the scorecards on the sides of the screen, it actually is like a game show.

I wouldn't call myself a political junkie, though I guess I do get that way every four years. The massive coverage the election gets from the news channels is both way overdone and endlessly fascinating.

Last night I watched the coverage of Super Tuesday. My plan was to try to stick to one station, since they'd have the results eventually, but my remote trigger finger got itchy and I was surfing all night. Here are a few random thoughts I jotted down.

1. I couldn't watch CNN, at least not all night.. Those giant screens and all those graphics. At one point Wolf Blitzer was standing next to a massive lineup of 24 different pie charts, and I think he wanted to just throw his notes down and walk down the street to the nearest bar. John King was doing all these fancy things with his fingers on a screen, and it was hard to follow and kind of glitchy. It was the world's most insane PowerPoint presentation.

First off, I'd just like to point out that Chris Matthews is the most annoying political analyst on television.

Now that that's out of the way, did anyone watch the New Hampshire primary coverage on CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News? If Chandler Bing was covering the primary, he'd say "could the networks be more wrong?" (If Chandler Bing really existed and commented on political coverage).

According to Paul Bedard at U.S. News & World Report, Bret Hume of Fox News Channel's Special Report is going after SpongeBob SquarePants. No, it's not about SpongeBob's alleged latent homosexuality.

That's actually on next week's show.

Actually, what it's about is ratings. Hume's Special Report, which has been around since 1998, is the number four basic cable show in the 6 p.m. slot and the number two news program behind The O'Reilly Factor. His long-term goal is to move up the ratings ladder for his time slot. However, networks like Nickelodeon, home of Mr. SpongePants, stand in his way.

Maybe Mr. Hume should do an expose on Mr. SpongePants, the deplorable working conditions at The Krusty Crab and what exactly is in a Krabby Patty?