Ellen Gray: Watching the big day on our small screens

IF YOU WERE standing on the Mall in Washington yesterday as President Barack Obama took the oath of office, or later caught a glimpse of him as he walked and was driven to his new home on Pennsylvania Avenue, you have a story to tell your grandchildren.

And, OK, maybe a touch of frostbite.

Contrast that with the way millions more of us saw yesterday's inaugural festivities: On screens small and large, on channels ranging from the Old Reliables - broadcasters with news divisions and their cable-news counterparts - to those like TV One and BET that don't generally cover inaugurations but wanted to be part of the day on which the nation's first African-American president took the oath of office.

Even outlets that weren't covering the inauguration wanted a piece of the action, with Bravo scheduling a daylong marathon of "The West Wing," Lifetime a showing of "The American President" - a Michael Douglas film that NBC's Brian Williams referenced at one point to illustrate how Obama's life was about to change - and the History Channel offering some documentaries on past presidents, including, "JFK: A Presidency Revealed."

Given the highly choreographed nature of the event, and the weather, which was chilly but beautifully clear, most of the best views were to be found on the high-definition feeds from ABC, CBS and NBC, which for much of the morning and afternoon were running the same footage as nearly everyone else, just sharper and brighter.

Pictures aside, there was no one-size-fits-all style of coverage, with commentary ranging from the wonky (Fox News' Brit Hume filling some down time by arguing that monetary policy has a better record of reversing economic downturns than stimulus spending) to the weird (Al Roker, on NBC and MSNBC, talking a bit giddily about what a good-looking man our new president is).

If you were watching BET, you probably saw more commercials than many other people did early in the coverage, with Jeff Johnson breaking in at one point to remind a guest, "We've got to go to break. We've got to make sure we pay some bills." And if you were watching CBS, you might have been under the impression, as Katie Couric seemed to be, that Vice President Biden was actually the president for the five or so minutes between President George W. Bush's leaving office at noon and Obama's taking the oath.

According to CNN, which properly cited the Constitution and posted the information under the title "Fact," Obama became president at noon, oath or not. (Couric, too, cleared that up before signing off.)

There was also a certain amount of confusion about whether Obama or Chief Justice Roberts flubbed the oath, something many commentators seemed reluctant to mention till they'd found out that Roberts had taken the fall for scrambling some words. NBC's Pete Williams, posting on MSNBC.com's First Read blog, attributed some of the blame to Roberts, some to Obama, concluding that all in all, the result was "close enough for government work."

The day's only other blip, a far more serious one, occurred at the post-inaugural luncheon, where Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., suffered an apparent seizure and was taken away by ambulance, an incident that wasn't reported for a while because the lunch was one of the few events of the day that wasn't being held on camera. ABC commentator Cokie Roberts, who grew up in official Washington and whose parents both served in Congress, appeared to be fighting back tears as she talked about Kennedy.

It was a big day for the Newseum, the media-focused museum on Pennsylvania Avenue that served as parade headquarters for a number of news organizations, and was mentioned often, and for CN8's Arthur Fennell, who shivered in the cold along with Joe Madison as the two anchored TV One's daylong coverage.

"We're troupers, we can do this," said a cold-looking Fennell, sitting in hat and gloves, waiting for the parade to begin. "We're honored to be able to bring this to you as you watch from your warm homes." *

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