Election graphics in the '80s

[johnnya2k6 171]

We're now three weeks away from the biggest night in television news every four years: Election Night, when the sets, music, and of course graphics that have been planned for months are being put to the test for the next seven hours...or until a winner is declared, whichever comes first.

 

Speaking of graphics: They always outdo themselves every four years, but for an example of how far we've come, Tom Dunn posted this on net.tv (the precursor to rec.arts.tv) in 1984:

 

The 1984 general election is over, with no major surprises in the

voting. Since the political result was a foregone conclusion, our unbiased

elite panel of experts and industry watchers was free to spend the evening

picking the winners of the quadrennial TV Network Election Coverage Computer

Graphics and Video Effects competition. This year's undisputed winner is NBC.

They placed first in all categories except demographic maps (won by CBS) and

Good Taste (a 3-way tie for last.) This result is to be expected, since the

American public doesn't want TV with Good Taste, they want TV that Tastes Good.

 

NBC had the best Fake Shiny Metal candidate picture frames, the best glints

and gleams, the best paint-program processed backgrounds and the most subdued

ADO/Mirage/Squeezoom effects. They were the only network all of whose

graphics were reasonably anti-aliased, the only ones who tried to do

anything about chroma crawl, and the only one to do any significant

on-line 3D animation. CBS and ABC were not even in the race.

 

All three networks had computer-generated title sequences and bumpers, none

of which appeared to have been done in-house. ABC's looked like they were

done by MAGI or perhaps Digital Effects. NBC's probably came from Cranston-

Csuri or Digital Productions. CBS's might have been done by Digital Productions,

but I only saw it once. (I could easily be wrong on all of these. Four years

ago all the production houses had distinctive styles. As they steal each

others' tricks, they're all developing the same mediocre look.) In all three

cases, the titles were from the Cheezy Logo Move school of vertiginous computer

animation. CBS's was slightly less noxious than the others, since the 2 elements

moved relative to one another in a non-trivial way.

 

On CBS and ABC the on-line graphics were pretty much trivial. ABC just showed

still art with superimposed titles and Mirage and Squeezoom page-turns. CBS

fancied up their stills with a snappy 3D demographic map and some modified

Rubik's cube page-turns. CBS and ABC both had serious aliasing problems that

made their coverage extremely hard to watch. Will these people never learn?

 

NBC, on the other hand, had several kinds of animated perspective bar charts,

and some nice animated 3D diagrams of Senate/House seats broken down by party

and on liberal/conservative lines. This stuff was all anti-aliased, on-line,

good-looking, real-time animation, something we haven't seen before on

election night.

 

All three networks had color-codes for the two parties. ABC and CBS had

Republicans Red and Democrats Blue, while NBC had Democrats Red and

Republicans Blue. This proved to be extremely confusing until we gave up

on ABC and CBS because of the headache-inducing quality of their graphics.

Maybe an ANSI comittee should be formed to standardize the color code.

 

CBS's graphics was done mostly using a system they put together in conjunction

with Ampex, and which they've used on previous elections. ABC used the

Dubner character generator/frame buffer/animation system, developed mostly

in-house. NBC's animation was all done using a system running on a VAX driving

secret rendering hardware. The system development was done in-house by

a group headed up by Christie Barton.

 

Surprisingly, PBS chose not to compete this year. They ran a Nova episode,

a documentary on Parimutuel horserace gambling and an installment of

`The Constitution.'

 

C-SPAN won the award for Most Tasteful election visual aids for their hand

printed poster-board title cards.

 

(CNN wasn't touched on, by the way)

 

Well, ABC's title graphics were actually by Cranston-Csuri, while Robert Abel and Associates did CBS's (just like in 1976 and 1980). PBS didn't start their own election coverage until 1992 (when they partnered with NBC).

 

Of course, as the years went by, so did the graphics. After Cranston-Csuri folded, ABC went with Pacific Data Images (who also produced NBC's "Decision '84" animations) and CBS, Rhythm & Hues for 1988; dunno who NBC went with. But we've come a long way from 1984, and who knows what the networks will have up their graphical sleeves on November 8.