6 networks, 6 varieties of election coverage
Some shows were flashier than others; sometimes, technology got in the way.
It took ABC's Charles Gibson two seconds to state about Super Tuesday: "Never in American history have we seen anything like this."
And two minutes to say it again.
No matter how many times the legions of Aunt Blabbys and Uncle Blah Blahs reiterated the thundering importance of the vote Tuesday night, none of the six networks covering it was really ready to make sense of everything.
Six candidates, two parties, 24 states - perhaps it was impossible.
"You need a Ph.D. in calculus to understand the Democratic calculations for delegates," Katie Couric complained on CBS.
ABC, surprisingly, didn't appear even to try to keep track, mostly offering state-by-state victory stats.
At the other end of the continuum, Fox News constantly flashed a running delegate total from both parties, part of its ponderous pile of bottom-screen info.
Acknowledging what cable-news viewers have known for years, anchor Keith Olbermann asked the techs to wipe MSNBC's screen clean of the clutter at one point, so people could get a better view of tornado damage in Tennessee.
"Sure, there's an election going on," says Hurricane Schwartz in ads for our own NBC10, "but there's other things happening, too."
Tuesday, they included the tornadoes and things like American Idol and The Biggest Loser on some broadcast networks, whose news coverage was inversely proportional to regular ratings expectations.
Slot-machine-style graphics (Bill O'Reilly's head barely fit on the screen) weren't the only flash at Fox, while arch-rival CNN seemed at sea, with stodgy Wolf Blitzer standing all alone before a big board and reading every digit from big numbers that any viewer could see.
Fox should change its slogan to Fair and Balanced and Bleached. Megyn Kelly, one of a bevy of blondes on display, gave a tour of the new set, "Fox News World Election News Headquarters," cautiously descending the metal stairways. Careful in those heels, girl.
The flash screens weren't always the right stuff. Kelly would be talking about Connecticut moderates, but those Georgia evangelicals would pop up in the graphic.
More controllable were the touch screens that several networks - Couric appeared to have one in her lap - used, that could be controlled by the reporter. John King had a pretty one at CNN.
But tech can be distracting. King finally got around to explaining who was voting for whom and why in Georgia, but Fox's Michael Barone, just standing there with a sheaf of papers, did a better job.
CNN calls its crowd "The Best Political Team on Television." Fox labels its jabberers "The Best Political Team Ever." And maybe this time, it isn't spinning.
Former White House chief of staff Karl Rove, cited several times Tuesday on NBC and MSNBC as Political Operative No. 1, made his debut as an analyst on Fox.
View him as Darth Vader or Yoda, you can't dismiss the vast storehouse of political know-how that knocks around in that huge noggin. When he shared it - no brag, just fact, TV-guy posing unnecessary - it had the weight of the oracle.
There was a lot of talk across the networks Tuesday about GOP front-runner John McCain's offering the surprising Mike Huckabee a spot on next fall's ticket.
Effortlessly spilling references to Henry Cabot Lodge and Lloyd Bentsen, Rove said nobody votes for the vice president anyway and Huckabee would be a terrible choice. "That's called doubling your trouble," he said.
Herds of candidates have run and lost against Rove over the years. Has he just doubled the trouble for competing news shows?