Brown out, blackout

[sigma7]

Amid the unexpected news of the day (Brown resigns from FEMA -- okay, expected but not necessarily today, LA blackouts) Matthew Felling's letter to Romenesko make me snicker.

...Today, CNN has brought us the 6-way split screen, a 3 by 2 matrix:

Cam 1: John Roberts
Cam 2: Some senator speaking
Cam 3: Some picture of the capitol, wisely remaining silent.
Cam 4: A street-view of the Supreme Court.
Cam 5: Another view of the Senator speaking, but one-second off from Camera 2.
(I'm getting dizzy)
Cam 6: Different video -- sometimes Bush in Mississippi, sometimes "The Roberts Hearings" on the screen, sometimes Jeff Greenfield.

I think we'll all look back on September 12th longingly, at some (probably too soon) point in the future, when every cable news outlet decides to resemble Hollywood Squares. ("I'll take Carrot Top and Homeland Security for the Block.")

Comments

[anw.livejournal.com]

Is this a digital option? The BBC and Sky both have multiscreens on digital. It's always a choice between the News 24 feed, and loops of the headlines, the main story, business, sport, or weather. I think it's an excellent and very useful feed.

[foenix.livejournal.com]

Sounds like someone at CNN has been watching too much 24.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

I have no idea. I've not seen it yet m'self; it was on in the Union as I was walking by, but at lunch there was a sea of humanity between me and the big-screen, and tempting as it is to play Moses, I just grabbed my taco-food and slinked off to my bat-filled realm.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Anderson Cooper is Jack Bauer....

Well, we know that Rush Limbaugh loves 24, and apparently Daryn Kagan IMs him frequently during the commercial break, so....

[motteditor.livejournal.com]

It was so bad I had to switch to C-Span (of course, I'd only picked CNN as it was the first channel that came up that was showing the proceedings).

The thing that really got me though was they basically quartered the main image, of whichever senator was speaking, so it looked like those large TV walls that show one image on four screens. Completely distracting.