Ellen Gray: On TV, Election Night means bright lights, fancy tech

A WEEK AFTER Sandy, electricity was flowing in Manhattan Tuesday night, as CNN lit up the Empire State Building in Romney red and Obama blue and NBC set 30 Rock aglow above "Democracy Plaza."

Presumably, New Yorkers (and some New Jerseyans) who were still without cable - or power - could follow the skyline for their election results.

CNN's John King had his "magic wall," Fox News' Bill Hemmer his "BillBoard" and network sets shone as bright as Times Square.

Contrast that with footage of people waiting in endless lines or filling out multi-page paper ballots. Little wonder Huffington Post chief Arianna Huffington tweeted, "Maybe we could get whoever makes the big network video walls to make our voting machines."

Unless you were watching glitzfree PBS, election night TV was a visual feast. Informationally, it was also a bit of a buffet.

At one point, not long before the 9 p.m. results came in, I found four different projected vote totals on five networks (only Fox News and CBS agreed at that moment on the number of electoral votes Obama and Romney had).

One thing everyone seemed to agree on: Traffic on the road to 270 votes was moving slowly, thanks to Ohio, Virginia and Florida - all still too close to call in prime time (though NBC projectthe president's victory by 11:14). CNN's Anderson Cooper had earlier predicted "long night" would be the most overused phrase.

Other highlights (and lowlights) of a long day and night of coverage:

* Philly again found its way into the national spotlight - at least on Fox News Channel - for the Obama mural at the polling place at Benjamin Franklin Elementary School, a dispute involving Republican poll-watchers and for the New Black Panthers member who, it was acknowledged, was a Democratic poll-watcher and "so he's allowed to be there."

* CNN apparently took at face value a cellphone video from YouTube purporting to show one Pennsylvania voter's experience with a machine that changed his vote for Obama to a vote for Romney. Color me slightly suspicious.

* Every channel had its prognosticators, but only MSNBC had a Krystal Ball. Ball, one of the hosts of "The Cycle," is a former Democratic nominee for a Virginia congressional seat.

* In a quote best enjoyed slightly out of context, Mary Matalin, James Carville's redder half, called Catholics - whom she predicted would help Romney - "the swingingest voters in the swingingest states."

* "We could have legalized marijuana in three states by the end of the night. That's what I'm going to be looking at!" ABC news senior political correspondent Jonathan Karl told anchor Diane Sawyer, sounding nearly as excited as CNN's Wolf Blitzer sounded about, well, everything.

* The late Tim Russert's whiteboard was missing from NBC, but on Fox News, Karl Rove wielded an iPad like a light saber.

*  Also missed by some: Dan Rather-isms. If a frog had pockets, it wouldn't get the time of day from CBS News anchor Scott Pelley.