Mixed Media

For Austin's television media, the challenge of covering this election was clear: How do you inject thrills, chills, and excitement into a truly unsexy election? After all, the true purpose of TV news is not to get minds thinking, but pulses racing.

Given that presumption, here are the "highlights" (if you don't find your favorite newscast below, consider it WWW: "Wasn't Worth Watching"):

Fox 7's News at Nine covered bombing and anthrax scares first, the boring election stuff later. Perhaps that was good judgment: When they finally did cut to a Gus Garcia interview at Threadgill's, there was no audio.

God bless those plucky kids at News 8 Austin, Time Warner Cable's 24-hour local news channel, who gave it the old college try. At 8pm, after early voting returns were released, reporter Eric Allen stressed that Garcia's 40% lead over Eric Mitchell was only an early-return result. "This thing could turn in any direction, and anybody could still win this mayoral race," Allen said. With apologies to Mike Myers of Wayne's World: Yeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt.

News 8 gets some props for at least putting a little effort into educating the voters before the balloting began. Election night is often a surreal affair on local TV, because the news teams almost completely ignore the elections beforehand and then suddenly whip into full battle mode for the final count. News 8 went the distance by interviewing all the candidates -- more than we were willing to do at the Chronicle. Talk about taking one for the team! We caught their interview with Jennifer Gale last week, and as torturous as it was to watch, it must have been excruciating to actually produce.

Yeesh, where's the remote?