MediaDetermined to avoid a rush to judgment that backfired four years ago, US television cautiously reported the trickle of election night 2004 results, but two networks broke ranks early yesterday to project President Bush as the winner in the key state of Ohio.
By calling the presidential race in Ohio for Mr Bush, which would virtually assure him election to a second term, Fox News and NBC put themselves at odds with the campaign of Democratic challenger Mr John Kerry, who held out hope of eking out a razor-thin victory in Ohio once provisional votes and absentee ballots were counted.
"NBC has called Ohio for Bush and the Kerry camp strongly disagrees," NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw said after Mr Kerry's running mate, Mr John Edwards, made a TV appearance to declare that the Democrats were not yet ready to throw in the towel.
Brokaw insisted that nothing NBC did could have altered the outcome, since its Ohio projection came long after all the polls had closed. He also said NBC was stopping short of proclaiming Mr Bush the final winner of the election and acknowledged that it was possible for Mr Kerry to turn the tide in Ohio once every last vote there had been counted.
Fox News, likewise, said it was standing by its projection that Mr Bush would emerge the winner in Ohio.
ABC, CBS and CNN declined to call Ohio as the race entered the small hours of the morning, deciding that the margin was too close and that too many outstanding ballots remained to be counted.
Still, some of NBC's rivals were clearly chafing at the bit. "If we hadn't gone through what we went through in 2000, I suspect we would be calling this for Bush," veteran CNN analyst Jeff Greenfield said, referring to the 2000 election night fiasco in which the networks called two different winners before deciding that a disputed outcome in Florida made the race too close to call.
Coverage of the 2004 race was far more deliberate - replete with caution and caveats from the networks as they carefully sifted and measured every nuance of the election.
"We're not going to rush to judgment," CNN's Wolf Blitzer told viewers. "We're going to do it the old-fashioned way: wait until 100 per cent of the precincts are in."
"No one's rushing to be first," said Marty Ryan, executive producer of political coverage for rival Fox News.
Invoking another of his trademark folksy metaphors when his network CBS called the swing state of Florida for Mr Bush, Dan Rather declared that Mr Kerry was "rapidly reaching the point where his back is to the wall and the bill collector is at the door."
Earlier, he said: "This Florida race is hotter than a Times Square Rolex" and said Mr Bush was "sweeping the mid-west like a combine".
Some networks sought to make up for the lack of decisive projections early in the evening with a burst of election night pageantry, especially at NBC, where Brokaw was anchoring his last hurrah before his planned retirement next month.
NBC presented coverage from specially built glass studios overlooking Manhattan's Rockefeller Centre, where the outdoor skating rink was turned into a giant US map filled in with red and blue pieces as states were declared for either Bush or Kerry. It flashed giant graphics on to a 6m high video screen and turned the side of a 12-storey building into a huge bar graph of electoral votes tallied for the two candidates.
Several blocks away in Times Square, CNN carried its broadcast from the site of the Nasdaq market set, projecting its election night data onto a bank of 96 screens, each 4.25m high and 20m wide.