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Inauguration Serves As Showcase For Traditional TV

  • TV Week, Wednesday, January 21, 2009 9:30 AM
The inauguration of Barack Obama turned out to be more of an example of traditional television than a showcase for broadcast technology. Industry observers say that unlike some news events, where tech innovation can add significantly to viewers' understanding, the basic coverage of an inauguration hasn't changed much.

"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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