Don't need to do any reserach as I have lived through elections going to Kennedy vs Nixon. CBS used red states for Republicans as far back as 1984 for Reagan / Mondale. I remember it well. Its true that not all media used that scheme until 2000 which is what you are probably referring to. But the red state = Republican has been used for decades and eventually prevailed. So get over it. Now is now and then was then.
So what ? One screwed up network doesn't make it so. I've got political research books, the works of Prof. Ken Mardis, and my own personal works going back well over 20 years, and I never saw any legitimate sources with a Blue=rodent, Red=GOP base. I did see a red & white color scheme (but white is difficult to use unless you have a background color, and works quite poorly on the internet).
"Its true that not all media used that scheme until 2000 which is what you are probably referring to. But the red state = Republican has been used for decades and eventually prevailed."
Yet for somebody who has been studying politics for a quarter century, I've seen only one network reference to the misguided scheme and nothing else.
"So get over it. Now is now and then was then."
Forget it. I'm not going by your media psych warfare color switcheroo newsspeak. You want to swallow the Commie Kool-aid, I'm not stopping you, but don't expect me to, pal.