As a watch the progress of the projection of the 2008 US Presidential results, I’m struck by the performance of the various web sites I’ve been watching.  I regularly check CNN, Fox News, and BBC News and tonight is no different.  Naturally, all three news sites had differing presentations of the results.

CNN’s results were always updating, timely, and, most importantly, available and legible.

CNN Progress

The same was true with the BBC’s results.

BBC Progress

But with Fox News, the results were routinely unusable.  At time, there was the “be patient” progress.

Fox News - Broken Progress

Or there was the “display it so small …” progress.

Fox News - Small Progress

No amount of “refreshing” the display with the Fox News site would cause the problems to correct.  They weren’t intermittent.

The conspiracy theorist would probably argue that the projected outcome was not to Fox News’ liking, so that deliberately made it hard for their internets viewers to see the results.  I’d rather think that the design of their election presentation application simply wasn’t up to the load that they were receiving.

This is just my interesting series of observations as I watch this historic night of US elections unfold.

Tags: politics