CNN plans to air a documentary on Diane von Furstenberg the day after tomorrow. But it seems the network is having some trouble finding someone who owns one of her wrap dresses from 30 years ago to gush about it on camera: "If you own a wrap dress from the 1970s, write to CNN and tell them where and when you bought it, and what it means to you. Your quote or photo could then be featured on the show. Email revealed@cnn.com." [DVF]
CNN anchor and precious treasure Anderson Cooper was on the Tonight Show last night, and, in between digressions into world affairs, host Jay Leno asked about his well-documented love for the reality show Real Housewives of Atlanta, and specifically for star NeNe Leakes. Shrewd as ever, Leno then teased Cooper for clearly favoring Leakes for her ample bosom, at which point Cooper abruptly changed the subject. When asked at a different point in the conversation about the inevitability of holographic porn, Cooper abruptly brought up making holograms of wrestlers. Leno must have been wondering about that, because wrestlers tend to lack ample bosoms! Click the video icon to unlock the mystery for yourself.
Ted Turner: simultaneously a crazy old coot and a totally awesome and admirable ex-media mogul! The CNN founder is out promoting his new autobiography, which gives him a chance to go on and on and on about his pet grudge, the scalawags at Time Warner who blew up his fortune by merging with AOL. Dude, it was only seven billion. Let it go! Here he is on David Letterman talking about how CNN sucks these days, without him, Ted Turner, around. Ted, we sincerely want you to come back, you crazy, crazy wild man. It would be great for us. He was also interviewed at the Time/Life building today, where he talked about nothing but how much Time Warner sucks (and prairie dogs):
Listen up, voters: It was not Sarah Palin's idea to try and fool you by wearing fancy clothes she would not normally have anything to do with! The Republican National Committee bought an opulent $150,000 wardrobe for her and seven family members before she even showed up at the convention, the former vice presidential nominee told Fox News Channel's Greta Von Susteren Tuesday night. The legendary MAVERICK was just "goin' with the flow... if that's the way they do this." She's never even been to a Saks or Neiman Marcus. Why on earth is she telling everyone this now?
He's not the most trustworthy source, granted, but Fox News host Chris Wallace claims to have heard that CNN is all embarrassed about its election-night holograms, which teleported the likes of singer Will.I.Am and correspondent Jessica Yellin into CNN studios in New York. Wallace, who serves as Fox's ambassador to the Godless liberals at the Daily Show, also maintains ties to CNN, via an old college roommate who is a technical producer there. He called this buddy at 5 pm on election night, resulting in the following exchange, according to Broadcasting & Cable:
Had Ted Turner's old rival Rupert Murdoch just issued an "autobiography" written by a former lieutenant, as Ted Turner has, one suspects it would not have been embraced so eagerly by sympathetic journalists at 60 Minutes, the Times, the Wall Street Journal and even AP, which meditated whimsically on the CNN founder's chapter titles. Maybe that's because the News Corporation chairman still enjoys the blood sport of media feuds in his old age, coordinating multi-outlet attacks on relative small fry like Keith Olbermann, while Turner is in the business of moving on — and making plenty of media friends in the process. He has forgiven Murdoch for what he suspects was the hiring of private investigators to prove him insane in the 1980s, as he explains in the attached 60 Minutes clip, and put behind him the loss of $7 billion, a devastating divorceand a bad prescription for Lithium.
Boy, CNN's election-night magic hologram technology was a hit! And all for the low, low price of $300,000 to $400,000. Money is no object in these times of plenty! Today, CNN boy wonder Anderson Cooper learns how the magic was made—and then is treated to the amazing sight of his colleague Erica Hill disappearing with a snap of her fingers! Too bad CNN moved AC's laptop in the jump cut, or it would have really looked convincing. Click to watch the poor trickery of cable news in action.
Oh no, Keith Olbermann, The Left's Old Favorite Cable Person, is attacking Campbell Brown, The Lady Who Yelled At Tucker Bounds! They share a timeslot on competing networks so it was certain to happen. Clip below. Campbell is a fine interviewer who does admirably call bullshit when she hears it, but her show's self-congratulatory "keeping them honest" segments still invariably boil down to "both sides stretching the truth, as usual, what are you gonna go?" meaninglessness. And hey, she got some history wrong! In attempting to explain why a single party controlling the legislature and the White House is bad, a terribly annoying bugaboo repeated only by media people and minority parties and not so feared by voters who vote for single party rule, Campbell explained that the last time this happened was in the 1970s, with Jimmy Carter. Hah. That's not true! Nor was it in the 90s, with Bill Clinton. It was, as Keith explains, in the 2000s, with the current President, Mr. Bush. Keith doesn't explain that Campbell's point about all of those situations being disasters is actually borne out by the evidence, but whatever. Unified Democratic government also brought us Vietnam and Civil Rights, for those keeping score at home. Mixed bag, right? Click to view
♦ Michelle Obama may end up on the cover of Vogue in the next few months: "It's been a long-standing tradition to photograph the new first lady. So needless to say, we are very interested in working with Mrs. Obama." But Ebony may get there first. [WWD]
♦ Shares of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. plunged today following the company's announcement it's revising its 2009 forecast. [Bloomberg]
♦ New York television critic John Leonard has died. [Vulture]
♦ A round of layoffs have hit Hearst, although the exact numbers haven't been released. [Folio]
CNN's cheesy hologram stunt for election night got star power from hip-hop artist Will.i.am, whose 3D image was beamed into CNN's studios for an interview with anchor Anderson Cooper. Will.i.am. compared it to Star Wars; Cooper corrected him, saying it was more like Star Trek. But anyone who remembers Princess Leia's holographic plea for help in star Wars knows Will.i.am had his sci-fi references straight. Can you think of a better caption? Leave it in the comments. The best one will become the post's new headline. Yesterday's winner: theodp, for suggesting Google CEO Eric Schmidt was thinking, "With my $1 salary, I'll be getting a tax cut!"
Every four years, for 200 years or so, American sat down to watch Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, or Tom Brokaw announce who the next president will be. Those anchors did it with authority, and the networks took their solemn duties seriously. Even when things went wrong, as in 2000, we could rely on those anchors to relate clearly and simply what was actually Going On. This year, though, was a goddamn mess. Jennings is dead, Brokaw's an ignored old man at a circus sideshow, and Rather was probably exiled to some channel only Dish Network subscribers get, or overseas. The options were CNN, the choice in 2004 of the world's most disappointed liberals, Fox News, a hideous death rattle already in progress, or MSNBC, where Pat Buchanan and Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews shout nonsense, nonstop. No one won. CNN had the holograms. What was that? What was the point of that? NBC lost Tim Russert this year, and we missed his whiteboard. It was definitely preferable to Chuck Todd—who we like!—standing on the holodeck with magical 3D graphic map that kept slowly turning from side to side for no reason. John King and his stupid magic map still serve no actual purpose. Meanwhile CNN refused to call any states too early, because of the 2004 debacle, even though no states were prematurely called in 2004, so to figure out that Obama won Pennsylvania and Ohio and hence the presidency (all before the polls closed on the West Coast!) you had to turn to MSNBC. And finally, Wolf Blitzer needs to get off of TV. He's everything that's wrong with CNN—a complete inability or unwillingness to ever say anything, just mindless equivalence and hedging and cliche, because CNN is the "unbiased" network. Gah. We're with Jack Shafer on this: Blitzer's infuriating. In 2012 we'll probably have to watch PBS. And then everyone loses.
♦ ABC appears to generated the highest ratings as the election results rolled in last night. NBC came in second and CNN ranked third. [TV Decoder]
♦ Time is rushing to produce a commemorative issue of the mag by the end of the week. [HuffPo]
♦ Both People and Us Weekly will feature Obama on the covers of the next issue. [NYP]
♦ Can The Daily Show survive an Obama presidency? and how will other media outlets deal with the post-election dropoff? [Politico, AdAge]
♦ An explanation of that holography thingie on CNN last night. [YouTube]
So that happened last night! And by "that," we refer not to the historic presidential victory, nor to the nationwide propositions that we are still gritting our teeth about, but to CNN newsman Anderson Cooper interviewing Black-Eyed Peas frontman Willi.i.am via hologram. Let us unite as a nation to dissect this clip's best/worst moments, blow-by-blow, after the jump!· "We're joined now, uh, via hologram, uh, with, by, uh, Will.i.am," Cooper begins, clearly thinking, "I'm missing the Bravo Real Housewives marathon for this?" · Will.i.am is beamed in with a Star Trek transporter beam special effect. Cooper stares uncertainly into the middle distance because he cannot see the person he's interviewing, which is a tremendous new innovation. · "All this technology, I'm being beamed to you like it's Star Wars and stuff," says Will.i.am. Not to pull a Liz Lemon, but, uh, Trek. · Cooper corrects him: "It's basically exactly like Star Trek." Thank you, Anderson. Willi.i.am's cogent response: "Yeah, but...yeah." · "Will, we're doing this interview with you this way because it's a lot quieter than having you in that crowd [in Chicago]. It's very hard to hear in this crowd," Cooper lies. · As Willi.i.am rambles on about the "Yes We Can" song, Cooper mentally composes an angry email to the CNN producer who let his boo Donna Brazile go off to ABC so they could spend her hair and makeup budget making a hologram out of the man who produced "My Humps." · "Will.i.am, I appreciate you being with us tonight via hologram," concludes Cooper. Will.i.am thanks him, says, "Check it out," and then does The Worm. · Cooper takes an awkward pause, collects himself, and says, "All right."
Throughout this election, self-interested vendors of neophilia have touted tech's ability to transform old-school politics. In reality, it has put a new facade on an old building: touchscreen vote analyses and Twitter quotations are just new ways of presenting exit polls and man-on-the-street interviews Barack Obama's heralded social-networking tools? Merely an update of the ward-boss operations of old. CNN's "virtual Capitol" on election night was the ludicrous culmination of this trend. When Wolf Blitzer thanked a holographic correspondent — "Jessica, you're a terrific hologram, thank you so much" — I realized that tech is not transforming the political process; it is debasing it.
Forget hacking voting machines; our media brethren are, at this moment, most concerned with gaming Digg to get out the vote for their stories about Barack Obama's apparent victory in the electoral college. (Our sister site Gawker was late to the game; its headline submission for "Obama Wins!" was seventh in line, judging by the URL.) Taking the lead: "Digg This If You Voted for Obama!" with more than 20,000 votes. It points to a CNN.com story. New media serves merely to confirm the victory of old media.
The Republican party is spreading the word "this thing is over," reported CNN, attributing its information to a "GOP insider." Ohio was the nail in the coffin, said correspondent Tara Wall, who got the scoop. We imagine dissections of the McCain campaign's mistakes and precious few moments of glory have already started on barstools throughout the nation. Video after the jump.
CNN has, as Barack Obama might put it, reshaped election night for the 21st Century, with holographic reporters and John King's famous, magical touchscreen. Over at Fox News, meanwhile, outgoing anchor Brit Hume is still coming to terms with basic "greenscreen" tech, the well-established technique in which a correspondent stands in front of a monochromatic background that is filled in later with special video equipment.
CNN is live on the scene today in the swing state of Pennsylvania, where people are very enthusiastic about getting to the polling places. They interviewed real live man-on-the-street "Ron Jones," who allows that he's so excited to vote that he's "been back a couple times." How could Matt Drudge allow this to happen? Click to watch the liberal media- African-American- ACORN- terrorist voter fraud revealed.
♦ Election returns may set TV viewing records tonight, assuming there's some "suspense." [AP]
♦ What's been on cable news channels all day? Mindless talk and speculation, for the most part. [TV Decoder]
♦ It's possible the networks will call the election before the polls close. [THR]
♦ Some of the high-tech wizardry in store tonight: CNN plans to feature 3D "holographic images" of the network's remote correspondents in its New York studio. [WSJ]
♦ More trouble for tabloid kingpin David Pecker: John Miller, AMI's chief operating officer, has resigned. [NYP]
