Female anchors now outnumber men on the broadcast evening news shows. Christiane Amanpour broke up the Sunday morning broadcast boys club when she was named the anchor of ABC's This Week.

And now, at long last, an inanimate machine is claiming its rightful place in front of the cameras as the first non-human co-anchor of a primetime cable news show.

Congratulations, Magic Wall!

CNN sent out a press release today, announcing a noon preview of John King's new show (John King, USA), which is set to debut on March 22 at 7 p.m.

"Every night, John will use his 'co-anchor' the Magic Wall as a window on America--a way to connect the country and see what is going on outside the beltway," reads the release. "With the help of special guests and new technology, John once again will get behind the numbers to humanize today's current events."

The Magic Wall will humanize us all!

Flashback: In the spring of 2008, we profiled the Magic Wall (and its creator, Jefferson Han).  

The patriotic-sounding show will be the permanent replacement for the departed Lou Dobbs, whose zeal for America was, shall we say, unquestioned.

In a promotional video—which has him taking batting practice at Fenway and rolling down highways in the heartland—Mr. King explains that the simple name simply means they'll have reporters looking for stories all over the country. "The mission incorporated in that most important part of our title is that, even though we'll spend most of our days in Washington, D.C., we'll always have people out their roaming the country," Mr. King says.

"You cannot cover national politics just by being in D.C.," he adds, right before the strumming guitar gives way to chirping crickets.

Mr. King also says he very much enjoys reporting, going back to his days as an intern in Providence. "I was already deep in like," he reminisces, "then I fell in love."

John King will be the network's new 7 p.m. anchor. Mr. King will take over the time slot sometime early next year. For the time being he will continue to anchor CNN's Sunday morning public affairs show, State of the Union. According to a press release, Mr. King's yet-to-be-named program will focus on "key political movements in Washington and across the nation."

While Dobbs's plans sounded vague, he concluded last night's broadcast by saying, "I'll see you next on the radio." Perhaps a more hospitable home than Jon Klein's CNN?

In en email to the Observer, Michael Harrison, publisher and editor of Talkers Magazine, called talk radio "a far more fertile medium for the kind of uninhibited, crusading opinion that has marked Lou Dobbs' style in the past year and a half."

"He has developed a loyal and growing following on the radio and has evolved into one of the medium's most important players," Harrison said. "I think his departure from CNN will help his radio show because I suspect he will be able to dig deeper into his own spontaneous truths -- which work well on radio -- without having to worry about how it will impact his TV image."

The announcement came in the wake of Lou Dobbs' sudden departure from the cable news network, where's he's worked on and off for nearly thirty years. Mr. Dobbs announced the news last night on the air.

That Mr. Dobbs and CNN are happy to part ways is of little surprise. In recent years, Mr. Dobbs has repeatedly clashed with CNN chief Jon Klein. And the two are well known inside the industry for having little love for one another.

Mr. Dobbs' heated on-air rants, particularly on the subject of immigration, have in recent years been an uncomfortable fit with Mr. Klein's attempts to brand CNN as the straight-down-the-middle, just-the-facts, cable news alternative to Fox News and MSNBC.

The uncomfortable alliance was fine when Mr. Dobbs' program was doing well. But as The Observer reported earlier this year, Lou Dobbs Tonight has been on a steady ratings slide for quite some time. More recently, Mr. Dobbs' embrace of the so-called "birther" movement has likewise failed to increase his nightly audience.

More from today's release:

As one of the nation's leading political reporters, King will host a definitive political hour that goes well beyond the surface of the day's top stories to provide in-depth analysis and context to key political movements in Washington and across the nation. As King does on his Sunday program, State of the Union, he will sit down with a wide range of the day's top newsmakers, key political reporters and analysts, and elected officials.

"The program will reflect what CNN is all about: straight facts from our anchors and the widest range of opinions from across the political spectrum," said Klein. "John has enthralled CNN viewers with his vast political knowledge, and he has spent the past year reporting from beyond the Beltway on pressing policy issues and the real people they impact. Every night, he'll share his passion and his insights about what is really going on in Washington and across America."

It was back in December 1987 when, with just over a year left in his second term, Reagan played host to a Washington summit with Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev. In terms of domestic politics, it was a touchy, sensitive moment for the president, with his own conservative base enraged by his plans to sign the I.N.F. treaty during the meeting.

So, in an effort to rally the nation before Gorbachev’s arrival, the White House arranged for the anchors from all four major television news outlets—Dan Rather of CBS, Peter Jennings from ABC, NBC’s Tom Brokaw, and Bernard Shaw of CNN—to interview Reagan together. On December 4, the anchors took turns asking questions, and then their networks repackaged the footage into 30-minute specials that aired at different times that night.

Facing a similarly critical moment—the fate of his health care reform push is now on the line—Obama went for the same saturation effect on Sunday. But his modified “Full Ginsburg”—sitting for individual interviews on every major Sunday morning interview show except “Fox News Sunday”—wasn’t quite as efficient.

The problem was as unavoidable as it was easy to see coming. It was obvious what topics each interviewer would bring up in his 15 or so minutes with Obama, and there really aren’t that many different ways to ask about them.

For instance, any host who didn’t spend a few minutes on Jimmy Carter’s comment last week that some of the most outlandish opposition to Obama’s health care effort comes from people who believe a black man “ought not be president and ought not be given the same respect as if he were white” would have been accused of journalistic malpractice; but what else can you really do except ask Obama whether he thinks there’s something to it—as David Gregory, George Stephanopoulos, Bob Schieffer, and John King all did?

Obama, of course, had his talking points down cold for the Carter question. Whether, in his heart and soul, Obama actually shares Carter’s view is immaterial; the White House believes (probably accurately) that the political cost of saying so would be unbearable. So Obama spent a few minutes giving the same basic answer to each interviewer: Yes, there are people who don’t like me because I’m black, just like there are people who do like me because I’m black; but no, that has nothing to do with the health care debate.

He even repeated exact phrases, for instance telling both Gregory and King that the Carter story had been “catnip” for a media that rewards rude behavior with “15 minutes of fame.”

It was the same story on other topics. After grilling him on health care and Carter, each interviewer reserved a bloc of time for Afghanistan, where Obama may soon be asked by General Stanley McChrystal to send even more troops. But no matter what unique twist they put on their questions, the interviewers all received the same stock answer, with Obama noting that Afghanistan policy had been “adrift” when he took office and, essentially, asking for time to get it right.

Both King and Schieffer asked why he was still talking about formulating a plan after announcing a new one back in March; Obama reminded them both that he’d said back in March that he’d revisit and re-examine the plan after six months.

On health care, the major reason he granted the interviews, Obama clearly had middle-class voters who currently have insurance on his mind. Invariably, he tried to frame his answers in a way that might convince them he’s aware of their concerns and is looking out for them. On each network, he made sure to point out that the average premium went up by 5.5 percent last year, “this despite the fact that inflation was negative on almost everything else.”

The result of all of this was a series of interviews that all looked and sounded pretty much the same. In total, Obama was on the four shows for about 70 minutes. But after you watched one, there really wasn’t much new ground plowed in any of the others, and it became an exercise in message repetition, with his answers sounding less considered and authentic than pre-rehearsed and packaged.

That said, there were some differences between the interviews. Stephanopoulos was by far the most aggressive questioner, trying to play gotcha with a question—and about 12 follow-ups, one in which he invoked the Merriam-Webster dictionary—about whether an individual health insurance mandate is tantamount to a tax hike.

Schieffer was more curious about foreign affairs, asking the only question about the Bush-instigated missile defense shield that Obama abandoned last week. King was the only host to spend time on jobs and the economy (and to ask if Obama would be getting an H1N1 vaccine shot); and Gregory asked for a non-White Sox World Series prediction.

From a viewer’s standpoint, though, the old Reagan model would have been preferable on Sunday. Once one interviewer had asked about Carter, the rest would have been free to ignore and ask about other subjects. And the interviewers, instead of each straining to make sure they hit every major topic of the day in their 15 minutes with the president, would have had more leeway to pursue interesting follow-ups and to press Obama for more specificity. And Gregory could still have asked about baseball, too.

So it seems odd that, at least in the first two months of the Bush post-presidency, the role of chief public defender of the Bush record has been handed off to, and embraced by, Dick Cheney.

The former VP appeared on CNN on Sunday in an extensive interview with John King. On the subject of the Bush-Cheney record, he was unapologetic. For instance, he vigorously denied any culpability for the economic catastrophe that took hold before he and Bush left office. “I don’t think you can blame the Bush administration for the creation of those circumstances,” Cheney offered. “It’s a global financial problem.”

He also made sure to single out two Democrats – Chris Dodd and Barney Frank – for sabotaging Bush’s efforts “to deal with the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac problem some years before” their troubles came to light. And when King confronted him with a slew of statistics – for unemployment, poverty, health insurance coverage, the federal deficit – that had grown dramatically worse during the Bush years, Cheney fell back on an old stand-by: “Eight months after we arrived, we had 9/11.”

What was more striking, though, was Cheney’s willingness – eagerness, it often seemed – to bluntly criticize Barack Obama and the new Democratic administration. Asked if “the president of the United States has made America less safe,” Cheney didn’t hesitate to reply, “I do.” Asked about Obama’s choice for a new ambassador to Iraq, Chris Hill, Cheney offered that “he’s not the man I would have picked for that post” and added that “I did not support the work that Chris Hill did with respect to North Korea.” And asked about a cover story in the conservative publication Human Events that accused the Obama team of resorting to “brazen” deception, Cheney agreed that “I think they’ve taken liberties, if you will, with the arguments.”

The CNN interview amounted to a televised and more expansive version of the interview Cheney gave to Politico in early February, just two weeks after leaving office. In that interview, Cheney warned of a “high probability” of another terrorist attack and charged that Obama’s efforts to reverse Bush administration policies relating to Guantánamo Bay and interrogation techniques would make the nation more vulnerable.

“When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,” Cheney told Politico.

That interview received international attention, as Cheney’s chat with King undoubtedly will as well. Meanwhile, Bush has almost completely disappeared from public view. Besides showing up at a Baylor University women’s basketball game at the end of January (where he received a warm welcome from the conservative Baptist school’s fans), he has said and done nothing to attract notice – the customary posture for a recently retired president (even if his predecessor was a tad more reluctant to yield the spotlight).

So why isn’t Cheney following his old boss’ example? There really is nothing to be gained from a president or vice president serving as the critic-in-chief for their successors. Those who agree with what Cheney is saying (and there aren’t many of them), already felt that way before he spoke up – and weren’t about to change their minds. Similarly, nothing he might say or do now will cause his harshest critics to suddenly rethink their views of him. As for the rest of the electorate, the broad middle, Cheney is only providing them with more reason not to like him. The content of Cheney’s critiques aren’t important to them; the lack of dignity and class that he is showing by not giving Obama an opportunity to succeed is.

Cheney is in an unsual situation as recent ex-vice presidents go. The last three ex-VP’s to return to private life immediately after leaving office – Al Gore, Dan Quayle and Walter Mondale – all harbored future political aspirations (as opposed to George H. W. Bush, who went directly from the vice presidency to the White House). For them, it was essential to give their successors, at least initially, public breathing room.

Cheney, who waged his last campaign in 2004, isn’t similarly constrained. If anything, he’s more like Nelson Rockefeller, the unelected vice president of an unelected president. Rockefeller was 68 years old – the same age Cheney now is – when he left the vice presidency in 1977. Rockefeller had long coveted the presidency, but his experiences in 1976 – conservatives in the G.O.P. had made it impossible for Gerald Ford to nominate Rockefeller for a full-term as VP – had finally shown him that his quest would go unfulfilled. He, too, had run his last race.

As reviled as he was by the right, though, Rockefeller wasn’t the lightning rod that Cheney is. His post-vice presidency, which ended with his death in January 1979, was mostly eventless. Other than boosting the Carter administration’s Panama Canal treaty and getting into a brief dust-up with a group of artists and art dealers over a new business venture, Rockefeller didn’t make many headlines (until, of course, the mysterious circumstances of his death came to light).

Not so for Cheney, who probably won’t be following Rockefeller into the art-collecting business.  His temptation to speak up and make his case for the Bush administration (and against Obama’s) is understandable on a human level. But he really would do well to remember what the Bush administration realized early on: putting Cheney out there doesn’t help.

In the current issue of Time, the magazine's editors name New York based scientist and entrepreneur Jefferson Han as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Mr. Han, who grew up in Queens, is the founder of Perceptive Pixel, the company that makes the futuristic multi-touch screens that are all the rage in this year's political coverage on TV, thanks to CNN and Fox News. (See Jeffrey Toobin demonstrating it above!)

John King, who spends big primary nights in front of the cameras at CNN playing with one of Mr. Han's multi-touch screens (nicknamed the Magic Wall), interviews Mr. Han for the "Time 100" package.

Along the way, Mr. King lets it slip that CNN will soon be doubling its Magic Wall arsenal.

"My fingers are part of that new world," writes Mr. King. "Tune in to CNN on any major election night as I navigate the ever-changing map that the folks at CNN call the Magic Wall. CNN owns one map, with a second on the way."

What will CNN do with its second unit? Are they currently grooming a second touch-screen specialist in addition to Mr. King?

Contacted by Media Mob, a CNN spokesperson was mum on the details. The spokesperson did, hoever, confirm that CNN has purchased a second Magic Wall and said the new unit will be arriving in the coming weeks and will make its debut sometime thereafter.

Above: Jefferson Han demonstrates his Perceptive Pixel technology.

On the night of the Super Tuesday presidential primaries, John King and Wolf Blitzer stood in front of a camera in a studio at CNN’s headquarters at the Time Warner Center and provided some live analysis of the night’s upcoming contests. Behind them was a device that looked like a widescreen television, showing a map of the United States.

The conversation eventually focused on California. While Mr. Blitzer gave a basic run down of the state, Mr. King turned and touched the screen with each of his forefingers. As he pulled his fingers slowly in opposite directions, the map of California expanded.

“The delegates for the Democrats, the way they proportion and decide who gets those delegates is going to be very important,” said Mr. Blitzer.

“That’s why I pulled this out,” said Mr. King. “California will be 53 different races. These are the congressional districts, those little lines inside.”

For the next several minutes, Mr. King ran through different scenarios in which, say, Senator Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but Senator Barack Obama still managed to win more delegates. As he spoke, he illustrated each scenario by tapping away at the screen behind him, turning congressional districts dark blue (for Mr. Obama) or light blue (for Hillary Clinton). Occasionally, while highlighting the significance of a particular region, he drew a circle on the screen using his finger as a telestrator (eat your heart out John Madden!)

“We’ve got a lot to look at here,” said Mr. Blitzer in appreciation as the real-life Minority Report moment lingered.

Sure enough, over the past several months, the jumbo multi-touch screen has emerged as arguably the hottest gadget of the 2008 presidential election cycle.

On a recent Friday afternoon, Jefferson Han, the founder of Perceptive Pixel, provider of these gadgets to the networks, was pacing back and forth in a dimly lit room at his offices in Chelsea, giving NYTV a demonstration of the proprietary technology. “It’s a great way to pull in the viewer,” said Mr. Han.

On big political nights, in addition to Mr. King’s so-called “Magic Wall” on CNN, Bill Hemmer of Fox News taps away at a Perceptive Pixel model, dubbed the “Bill Board”. In the near future, their ranks will likely grow. Mr. Han said that ever since the “Magic Wall” debuted on CNN on the night of the Iowa caucus, sundry TV news organizations, in this country and abroad, (he declined to name which ones) have contacted him about the possibility of adding one of his gizmos to their newsrooms.

As he spoke, Mr. Han, 32, ran his fingers gently across the face of an 8-foot by 3-foot screen. He was wearing a black T-shirt tucked into dark jeans. A long, plaid scarf was flung around his neck. At the touch of his fingers, a cascade of images flickered across the vertical surface. Satellite images of Manhattan. Delegate maps of Texas. Cat scans of a human brain.

“I think the audience really enjoys it because it doesn’t feel like pre-canned material that some producer has made and is spoon feeding to you,” said Mr. Han.

Mr. Han, the son of Korean immigrants, grew up in Queens. After graduating from Dalton, he went to Cornell University, where he studied computer science and electrical engineering. During the mid-90's, while still an undergraduate, Mr. Han helped to develop one of the first on-line video chat systems, which he later formed into a company called CUseeMe. After living in L.A. for several years, Mr. Han moved back to New York in the fall of 2002 and began working as a research scientist at NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.

There, Mr. Han began developing his multi-touch technology. Following an entrepreneurial hunch, he eventually spun out the technology and formed Perceptive Pixel. In Feb. 2006, he debuted his outsize multi-touch screen interface (which continues to dwarf anything else on the market), at the TED conference, in Monterey, Calif.

Afterwards, a clip of Mr. Han’s demo became a YouTube sensation and helped quickly attract a diverse range of clients. Soon, Perceptive Pixel was receiving phone calls from the likes of military contractors interested in tracking and illustrating the complex relationships between terrorist cells; radiologists hoping to improve their methods of organizing and viewing data on their patients; and titans of Wall Street types looking for an edge in grouping and displaying dense matrices of financial information.

In the fall of 2007, Mr. Han was showing off his wares at a military trade show in Texas, when David Bohrman, a CNN executive, (presumably on the prowl for new technology) happened on the Perceptive Pixel booth and promptly decided that CNN should explore getting into the multi-touch game.

“There have been other touch screens used on TV before to much lesser degrees of success,” said Mr. Han. “Their precision was terrible. You could only pretty much do those ATM-type of gestures. Let’s hit a big target from 0 to 9. Nobody had worked hard on a touch screen that’s this precise with pressure sensitivity that adds a nice human feel to things.”

Mr. Han said that his company spends virtually no money on advertising and that the recent exposure on the cable news networks is already helping attract more potential clients. “The elections are just the beginning,” he said.

Mr. Han said he can envision TV producers in the near future employing his technology in a wide range of situations: sports anchors sifting through statistics on big draft nights; national security correspondents illustrating military strategy in the midst of breaking conflicts; business reporters explaining shifting economic data during days of big market swings.

Recently, according to Mr. Han, the producers of CBS’s hit show CSI contacted Perceptive Pixel about featuring one of their units on the show. But Mr. Han is not particularly interested in using his models as fictional props. He turned down their offer.

Mr. Han declined to say exactly how much his units retail for and noted that the screens are “primarily priced for defense and military,” clients. Mr. Han said that he occasionally fields phone calls from individuals of high-net worth, eager for the ultimate home theater bragging rights. As a result, not long ago, Mr. Han advertised a barebones version of his “Interactive Media Wall,” in the Neiman Marcus catalogue.

“No longer chained to cumbersome physical input devices, your imagination can fly at warp speed in a medium that can easily keep pace,” read the ad. “Tap out a sonata with your fingertips, flip through manuscripts with the swipe of your hand, or crop photos with a pinch—it is perfect for grand gestures or the lightest touch.” Starting price: $100,000.

In a time where TV news divisions are already feeling their budgets pinched, will anybody other than the big New York networks be able to spring for such pricey technology?

Terry Heaton, an executive with Audience Research and Development (“The Premier Television Branding Company,”) and author of a series of essays called, “TV News in a Postmodern World,” said the Perceptive Pixel technology was “a really cool idea,” but that the “timing is tough.”

“I’m not sure viewers would say it’s a make or break thing,” said Mr. Heaton. “The one good thing is that it allows the broadcasters to keep the anchor on screen during times of going through boring numbers. The wow factor is kind of cool.”

That said, Mr. Heaton noted that the innovation is coming along at a difficult time for broadcasters. He could maybe see local newsrooms in the top ten markets investing in the technology. But stations in smaller markets, he said, probably won’t be able to justify the costs.

“Nobody has any money anymore,” said Mr. Heaton. “The revenue numbers are just heading south. The layoffs and such haven’t been as noticeable in the television industry as the layoffs in print, but it’s a part of everyday life. Is this piece of equipment really going to make a difference in terms of our presentation, or would I rather hire a couple of extra people?”

For the time being, Mr. Han said he doesn’t have any direct competitors, although, bloggers often seem to mistake his wares with Microsoft Surface—Bill Gates’ evolving touch-screen technology, which features a flat 30-inch tabletop that operates with no keyboard and no mouse.

“The key difference between us and Surface is that we’re not really going after this kiosk entertainment market,” said Mr. Han. “We’re actually trying to do things that are useful and productive--not frivolous. I might be turning away a lot of business. But that’s not what I want to do. It’s much harder to attack these problems for medical imaging and for architecture and for news coverage, than it is to make a coffee table that you can order from.”

It was this relentless focus on the issues that produced comments like these from CNN's panelists:

One other observation.  CNN favorite Bill Bennett observed that Mitt Romney had performed as if he were "all in -- as you would say in Texas Hold'em."  That's a reference you'd think Mr. Bennett might want to stay away from.