Personally, I was more impressed with Fox News’ magic draw-as-you-go big board that they played around with all night, but CNN drew a lot of media attention for their debut of the field reporter ‘hologram’. The only problem was that it wasn’t a hologram at all, which was painfully obvious from the video, merely instead more green screen work like we already see from cable news every day. Instead of just projecting a fake background or a new HEY LOOK HERE graphic in the bottom corner, CNN decided to bring the whole reporter home.

I don’t understand why they wasted all that special effect technology to bring her back to the studio. If it were me, I would’ve had my reporters reporting LIVE VIA ‘HOLOGRAM’ from THE MOON, DINOSAUR ISLAND or THE INSIDE OF A COLON. I think that really would have improved their ratings. Instead we just had a few short segments of Wolf Blitzer staring slightly off into space– which isn’t really that different than normal now that I think about it.

In an article reviewing the lackluster CNN ploy Don Reisinger inadvertently catches the truth of what has actually happened this election cycle.

I applaud CNN for at least trying something new. But if show producers are smart, they’ll shelve their "hologram" idea, and move on to something bigger and better, like transporting Ms. Yellin back and forth between Chicago and New York next time. I think that’ll keep them busy for a while, and help us enjoy some quality programming, while they’re trying to figure out how to reconstruct atoms.

I know the idea of a "hologram" is alluring to some. But let’s not allow our hopes for the future cloud our judgment.

CNN’s "hologram" was dumb.

It’s a little late to issue warnings about not letting ‘hope’ cloud our judgment.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 6th, 2008 at 3:22 PM and is filed under 2008 Race, Media Bias, Obama, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.