Check Out Fox News’ Insane $30M Election Day Studio

Wired.com reports that election day isn’t just a competition between candidates vying for the presidency. It’s also a competition between networks vying for viewers. Television news programs spare no expense on studios that glow and pulse with video, audio, and on-screen graphics. “Election night is always one of the biggest nights of the year,” says Peter Blangiforti, Fox News’ vice president of broadcast technology. “It’s the equivalent of our Super Bowl.”

Today, Fox unveils its $30 million stadium. Almost every surface in Studio F in midtown Manhattan is a canvas for displaying information. The two-story studio features 46 screens (including an LED wall that measures 32 x 9 feet), an LED floor, a cascading set of monitors framed by a transparent staircase, and a 360-degree video “chandelier” that descends and ascends on cue. “We’re driving more than 100 million pixels of graphics and live video,” Blangiforti says.

The set is essentially an architectural infographic that newscasters can walk on, stand alongside, and interact with. “It’s all about architecture marrying with the video source, so graphics can be part of the environment,” says Jim Fenhagen, executive vice president at Jack Morton Worldwide¹, the firm that created Studio F. His vision is simply a sophisticated riff on what newscasts have always done on election night: Use graphics to quickly and clearly convey information, not the least of which is who’s ahead in the race to 270 electoral votes.

Read more at https://www.wired.com/2016/11/inside-foxs-insane-30m-studio-super-bowl-news/