Wednesday 5 November 2008

Election night thoughts - great result, typically useless BBC

Firstly, Woohoo!!! :)

When I delved into the deeper reaches of Virgin Media's cable offering, I was happy to find that CNN international were carrying the normal US CNN election night programme. Imagine how delighted I was to find that CNBC seemed to be carrying MSNBC!

Oh, oh it's Keith Olbermann! Oh and Rachel Maddow! Looks like it's going to be a better viewing experience than I imagined.

For a while I stuck with MSNBC flicking back to CNN during the ads (lukily the ad breaks weren't in sync) then disaster! MSNBC was no longer there as CNBC had replaced it with their own boring business/finance orientated coverage. Boo!

So during breaks in CNN, I was forced to have a look at the BBC. Oh My God! It was just as bad as I'd come to expect. Dull Dimbleby discussions with Dimbleby at his smug and patronising best. No decent results or analysis and dumbed-down graphics and then that awful smug party. I mean interviewing Ricky Gervais! WTF? I mean what were they thinking? How much did they spend on this smugfest?

They do similar things for UK elecitons too, dumbed down graphics, no useful analysis and smug parties. So they really thing anybody but the likes of me is going to be watching politics at 3 in the morning? We don't need dumbed-down smugness but a proper results and analysis service.

Did I mention smug?

The only vaguely amusing thing on the BBC was Jon Bolton being beligerant and complaining of bias!

So mainly it was CNN all night. Their holographic correspondents was quite funky but didn't really add a great deal and I felt sorry for their correspondent at the Obama rally which was watching CNN and consequently went crazy everytime they were on drowning out anything she had to say. All in all though a competent and intersting results services. Why can't the BBC do this or just save money and stream CNN?

John McCain's speech was gracious but I was feeling for him when he kept trying to stop his crowd from booing Obama with ever more pleading "Please"s. The camera focuses on some knuckle-draggers in the crowd looking very confused and angry. Yeah, that was a campaign to be proud of right there...

Obama's speech was as good as you'd come to expect from him. I particularly liked when all the Bidan and Obama families came out. It was such a feel-good moment. Was that Biden's mum?

Let's see how long I can stay awake today...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

David Dimbalby is an uniformed inarticulate bore .His performance last night was a disgrace .

Can nothing be done to remove him from such important events

Anonymous said...

I watched it all on CNN on the telly and MSNBC on the PC.

The MSNBC lot were loving it :-)

Bernard Salmon said...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/
I complained to the Beeb about the ridiculous local elections results coverage in May. Although I got the brush-off, if people keep complainign about their shabby coverage, that might eventually get the message.