I have always found CNN to be on the cutting edge of new media. From their multi-touch display to do a deep dive into the results of each state during this years election to their coverage of content stemming from the uber-geek twitter.com website, CNN knows new media.
Tonight, they broke new ground with the introduction of holographic correspondence. Here’s a quick look at their first run:
Without a doubt, CNN has been the most popular source for election coverage. I attribute their success to their ability to stay on top of bleeding edge technologies and put them to practical uses. By connecting with the audience in a more personal way, (like their iReport service) have made them the new standard for traditional news broadcasts, proving that embracing new technologies and experimenting can have great results.
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I agree. I thought the hologram was a little weird though. Guess I am getting old!
Hiya,
Yeah, I agree CNN is a great news station and watch it continually – especially when a big news story is happening.
But just FYI, what they had on the election coverage was not an actual hologram, even though it sorta appeared to be one to TV viewers.
It was more like 3D chroma key or green screen – there was no actual hologram in the studio with Wolf. They surrounded the subject person with video cameras, so they could see every angle of them, and matched camera movements at that site with the camera movements in CNN HQ where Wolf Blitzer was.
It was an interesting effect – better than just green screening a 2D image of the person – but I was a little bothered that Wolf etc pretended they could actually SEE the person image standing in the studio with them, when that wasn’t the case. Plus refering it to as a ‘hologram’ which it actually isn’t.
I would have preferred they stated exactly what it was they were doing (because it’s still unique and impressive) instead of trying to “foll” their viewers into thinking it was something else.
FYI: How CNN ‘hologram’ was done:
http://gizmodo.com/5076663/how-the-cnn-holographic-interview-system-works
An *actual* hologram that does what CNN was pretending to do (video) – ie. a person able to see and interact with a hologram image of someone who is actually 1000s of miles away:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQnffi6tN0g
FYI.
- Steve
The hologram looks very cool! I’m really bummed that I didn’t see this last night!
Interesting!
I thought it was similar to the next gen Cisco Telepresence. Tricky CNN, very tricky.
Looks like they did great overall from a business perspective:
“CNN emails to tell us they brought in 27 million unique visitors to their site on election day yesterday, a record. Comscore says they averaged just 5 million unique daily visitors in September, so this is more than 5x normal traffic.
The site also generated an astounding 276 million page views. An average day on CNN is about 35 million page views, according to Comscore worldwide stats.”
Technology has ended reached a milestone. Even the world of news is being invaded. On hindsight, people may or may not benefit from it at all. Just as it goes, “good news, bad news, who knows?”
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