Building the NBC News Big Board

The NBC News Big Board began as a touchscreen prototype for exploring county-level election results and grew into the live election map used by Steve Kornacki on NBC and MSNBC. Built by EJ Fox and Michael Small with NBC News Digital’s product and technology teams, it combined an interactive county map with election scorecards and historical data panels. The design was shaped around on-air storytelling: Kornacki needed to pan and zoom, reveal results, and move between views smoothly while speaking to a national audience.

Making software for live broadcast brought unusual pressure. In the weeks before Election Day, the team added filters and other features in response to producers’ changing needs. During election night, Fox could update the application remotely by editing data, connecting to NBC’s network, deploying the change to a server, and notifying the producer - sometimes seeing it appear on television just minutes later. The system had to work reliably on equipment and screens he did not control, amid other broadcast failures unfolding over radio. In the end, the Big Board performed as intended: Kornacki used its maps and historical panels on air as designed, and a colleague reported that the application had avoided the frustration it had caused in a previous election.