· ABC came in first, NBC second, and CBS a distant third in their election coverage, which amazingly was slightly down from 2004. (Cable network coverage is blamed.) Regardless of where you watched it, however, it all ended the same way: "Barack Obama swept to victory as the nation's first black president Tuesday night in an electoral college landslide that overcame acial barriers as old as America itself." There Variety goes again—always playing the ace card. [Zap2It, Variety] · Paramount is close to signing an agreement with Technicolor to build a new sound postproduction facility on the Melrose lot. It's a move that comes several years after similar upgrades from rival studios, making them "something of a laggard in the postproduction community." They were the postproduction community laggard laughingstock! [THR] · Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called for an "end to media censorship" in his first public address, though the end of the word "censorship" was abruptly cut off when Putin snipped the cord on his microphone. [Variety]· Gore Verbinski is said to be looking to produce and possibly direct a movie based on this WSJ article about a guy obsessed with a Second Life-style virtual community. It sounds kind of interesting, unless it makes a wrong turn somewhere and starts giving off whiffs of S1m0ne. [EW] · The opening day of the American Film Market in Santa Monica brings a glut of movies in various states of completion looking for investors and distributors. Organizer Jonathan Wolf uses a lengthy pendulum metaphor to explain the economics of it all that put us in a light trance. [THR]