CNN goes Star Wars with election night holograms

Did you see it?

CNN anchors Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer interviewed two people in Grant Park Tuesday night via hologram.

The network's high-tech Election Night stunt featured interviews with reporter Jessica Yellin and musician will.i.am, who appeared virtually in CNN's New York studio even though they were physically in Chicago. Viewers saw them as live, 3D virtual images surrounded by a blue glow.

Many people likened it to the movie "Star Wars" when Princess Leia appears in a hologram and pleads to Obi-Wan Kenobi: "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope!"

Tuesday night's TV audience was expected to be huge - close to 100 million people - and the competition was fierce, which might explain why CNN went for a little "wow."

CNN officials would not say how much the hologram technology cost, and were not available for comment Wednesday. But the Baltimore Sun reported that the person stood in front of a ring of 35 high-definition cameras, which sent the 360-degree imaging data to computers in New York.

Viewers had a mixed reaction to this never-before-used reporting tool; either they found it freaky weird or futuristically cool.

Daily Herald TV Critic Ted Cox was not among the fans, especially of the will.i.am interview.

"It was a pseudo interview with a pseudo celebrity. will. i. am? How about will. i'm. not. quite?" Cox said. "Even if you were going to interview the rapper for his sense of the mood at Grant Park, isn't that mood part of it, the way it is with TV reporters covering New Year's Eve bashes? What's wrong with the old "Nightline" standard operating procedure of doing the interview with a split screen, so you can actually see the people who are talking?"

Others thought it looked cool but added nothing to the coverage.

"At first, I was put off by the hologram because it was really distracting, almost shocking," said public relations executive Aaron Schoenherr of Glen Ellyn. "But I found myself watching CNN's coverage well into the evening just because I wanted to see it again."

Sue Markgraf, president of GreenMark Public Relations in Mundelein, liked it and thought it made the broadcast more "experiential."

"As television evolves further into the digital era ... look for news programming to employ new technologies that hook and engage the viewer before they switch channels," Markgraf said.