History was made late in the evening of November 4 as Barack Obama was elected the next president of the United States. It was a historic victory as he is the first African American elected to the office, he is younger than any president I have seen in my lifetime, he raised more money than any campaign before and had to endure a campaign longer than most. But we also witnessed television broadcast history in the November 4th coverage of the election with whiz-bang technology the likes of which we have never seen.

CNN had ghostly, glowing, specters in the studio with Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper as they talked to their subjects like they were right there in the room.

NBC news had virtual 3D sets with columns and hallways and floating states and graphics that sprouted right out of the floor around the talent.

Fox News covered their HD news feed with so many graphics, stats and information that it made Bloomberg look like the Weekly Reader.

Most all of the news coverage in this election has included some type of multitouch, touch screen, or iPhone-style pinch-action map of some type or another. It was a fantastic display of planning and execution that happens in realtime and doesn’t really require any post-production at all! Maybe this will usher in a new type of post that has to happen before the shoot. It seems much more involved than traditional live, multicamera, broadcast television event prodcution. Wired magazine has the best article about this cutting-edge technology that we have seen in the election. And it will only get better from here.