Is anyone else annoyed by the ostentatious graphics on the news?

Election night was the worst. In an effort to be super-informative, most networks succeeded only in assaulting my eyes with distracting, overbearing graphics for three hours.

The result? I actually watched Katie Couric on election night.

Now, I’m no Katie Couric fan, but I’ve got to say that CBS sported the least annoying graphics of the night. In fact, they were downright classy.

Take a look:

Even when they predictably used the huge touchscreen, it wasn’t shoving the technology in my face.

And, for the most part, their charts were minimalist and clean. They avoided the bright, “PowerPoint 95″ color scheme. And they didn’t have 18 graphs on the screen at one time.

Compare this to NBC:

Normally, I like NBC’s look. But, wow, what was going on tonight?

What was the deal with the virtual hologram images in the horribly rendered pillar-room? It made me feel like I was in a bad role playing game.

Last, let’s look at Fox:

Well, Fox is Fox. Still using five different fonts per screen.

I just don’t get why networks think that an excess of brightly colored charts is a good thing. For me, visual aids count for a lot, especially for something as important as the news. Unfortunately, things seem to be getting worse rather than better…