this set-up does look much different than rocketboom and other shows.

This sure seems sinister to me, but perhaps the confluence of alternative media and cable networks cannot be entirely negative. It also may workout that the surface design of these programs has more to do with the influence of the creative people, designers and so forth, who work on these programs. (I have no idea if the big networks relinquish this sort of control.)

Last night, I also noticed, watching the actual debate, how gratuitously CNN uses their logo, branding, and the colors red, white, and blue. The Daily Show, and others, have noted how absurdly often CNN’s Wolf Blitzer (is that his real name), and the other network anchors say that they “have the best political team on television”: the current frequency is twice per minute. Yet, in CNN’s case, the repeated use of their logo is even more outrageous. It looks as though they may also be going for the myspace tiled background look (also see below).

Compare CNN’s logo use with some guy’s cute myspace background.

The ostensible plan here is to make sure that every shot of the candidates contains a CNN logo. Of course there’s always the logo in the right-corner of the scroller, as well. Maybe CNN could get some attention grabbing ideas from the Web’s Worst Backgrounds