Following this blog was fun more (and more enlightening) than the newscast itself. Great idea, J-source! Please do this again. And please get Magid in for the next one. I'd love to get his take on the creature he has wrought . . .

IN review: Quite a technical opera. However, the CB-zee is merely humming the lights and the costumes.

There's a shortlist of opportunities to fix the obviously derivative approach to making the news more entertaining (aka 'reality' teevee made really real) on the CB-zee; they are in this order: new, new & improved, and under new management.

Now that we - the great unwashed and slightly showered - users born witness to the new graphics package, 'open office' set and heard the whoooooosh SFX, alongside a hip-hop thematic to juice up pool feeds of this and that viz, well... golly! what is one to make of all of the 'innovation'?

I expect there will be an +invocation+ of the "new and improved" mantra soon after this somewhat lame rollout (seriously, does the so-called 'new' National measure up to all the bumpf?)

I predict the 'show' will slide back into a more comfortable sweater within months (think of Radio Canada's retrofit several years when Bernard, the anchor, was dumped for a short spell; it was a calamity with the viewers. And all those responsible for the disastrous notion that news on _the public broadcaster_ ought to be amusing got what they deserved...

Stay tuned.