Covering the Election Coverage

As usual, the local stations stumbled through election coverage, as anchors and reporters used to anchoring car chases or handling live shots in front of crime scenes that had been empty for hours are suddenly forced to cover politics as if they do it every night.

As I sat glued to the screen last night, some things that struck me:



It's a tad hard to make it out above, but yes, KNBC/4's Paul Moyer was wearing an "I Voted" sticker on air Tuesday night. (So was his co-anchor, Colleen Williams). Cute. And incredibly distracting. My mind started to wander: Is Moyer a Schwarzenegger fan? Did he vote for Prop H? Does he even live in Los Angeles? When did he vote? Where's his precinct? Does he do the patented "Moyer head turn" while asking for his ballot? ("New this morning... I'm ready to vote. Paul Moyer inside the election booth starts... RIGHT NOW!") Seriously, it's distracting. I took mine off at around 10 this morning. It's not cool to still be wearing one at 11 p.m.



Aww, how cute! KCOP/Channel 13 is pretending to be a real news organization! Look, they're even sitting behind a desk and looking all serious! Neat-o. For one night every two years, Rick Garcia and Lauren Sanchez sit down, wear modest clothing and read the teleprompter with a straight face and no sound effects. But don't worry, boys -- Lauren's legs will be back on Wednesday.



Here's where you can get into trouble. Pointing to the above results of L.A.'s Prop H, KABC/7's Mark Brown noted that it was on the verge of passing. What he didn't note is that the measure needs a two-thirds vote to pass, since it raises property taxes. So it's not looking so likely after all. Over at KNBC/4, Paul Moyer (apparently he takes his voting seriously, as witnessed by that sticker) pointed out the two-thirds rule.

Other points:

:: Cheers to KCBS/2 for adding a ticker for local race results starting at 10 p.m., as the station ran CBS News' national coverage. KABC and KNBC for some reason didn't. And at 11, KNBC's ticker didn't match with what the anchors were talking about. On screen, Moyer and Williams were referring to races with 35% of precincts reporting, while the ticker still noted 7%.

:: Still, KNBC has Sherry Bebitch Jaffe to provide some perspective and updated returns. Why don't the other stations employ outside political experts? (David Ono tried his best at KABC, but the Democratic and Republican operatives he brought in didn't offer much by way of analysis).

:: Gotta say, KCBS/2's Paul Magers has the smoothest delivery of any local anchor.

:: The California governor's race was decided so soon that both Schwarzenegger and Angelides spoke in front of their respective campaign parties before 11 p.m. -- which meant that Channels 2, 4 and 7 didn't carry the speeches live.

:: I didn't get a chance to see the 10 p.m. coverage from KTLA/5, KCAL/9 and KTTV/11, so feel free to add more observations in the comments.