Tanksale, who has a master's degree in computer science from Purdue University and previously worked at Microsoft, is one of the three instructors for the interactive-television course, which is filled with a kind of all-star lineup of 24 (or so) students, handpicked from various majors. Jennifer George-Palilonis, a former Detroit Free Press and Chicago Sun-Times staffer, coordinates the journalism-graphics sequence at the school and is another of the instructors. The third is telecommunications expert John Dailey, who, like Pollard, once worked for CNN. They all feel like scientists trying out a new experiment, correcting themselves as they go.

Dailey remembers firsthand the pounding CNN Headline News took when the 24-hour news network thought it, too, had figured out the future of television news: It dressed up its looping segments with tickers and so many modules that viewers went screaming from the screen.

"The feedback was awful," Dailey recalls. "People were turning away in droves, saying it was too much information on-screen. They had three crawls going. The design aspect was dizzying."

Here, viewers customize. They can take away, add, or, if they like, watch a linear newscast, with just the anchor. "On CNN, we gave them no choice," Dailey says. "With this, the viewer is saying, 'I want this' or 'I don't want that.'?"

What the students are doing, says George-Palilonis, a Ball State journalism grad, is "taking the strengths of a newspaper, which are depth of coverage and breadth of coverage, and, with an expertise in those areas, doing what broadcast isn't able to cover in a one-minute package. And I think it really strengthens broadcast and the ability to tell a well-rounded story."