If cable news channels are experts at anything, it is killing time. There are always guests willing to come on and talk about whatever the story of the moment is, and sometimes props too. Remember the chunk of pipe that made the evening news rounds during the Gulf oil disaster?

Yesterday CNN, which has been ahead of the curve in the gimmicks department with its virtual objects, holograms and magic walls, apparently called in the Warner Bros. Movie Studio prop department as it featured a replica of the capsule that the Chilean miners would be returning to the surface in.

Tony Harris and Rafael Romo explained the capsule to viewers yesterday, as the network waited for something new to happen in Chile.