"The technology of modern television is almost completely
irrelevant to this," says Aaron Brown, former CNN anchor and current Arizona State University professor. The high camera shots that give a sense of the crowd size have hardly changed since the
1960s, he says. TV coverage of the Obama swearing-in appeared very similar to past inaugurations, agrees Kathleen Hall Jamieson, communications dean at the University of Pennsylvania.
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It wasn't that the networks didn't offer a few different techniques this time around. Besides high shots, there were cutaways from Washington to locations in other cities where people were watching the inauguration. CNN even tried to get a picture from space of the throng on the National Mall. Nonetheless, the approach overall was still familiar and traditional.
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