I have to agree. It would be really nice if there was a way to select both a channel and brightness for any alarm.
Because the current alarm options require you to select either a channel or screen brightness, right now I have a "Night" channel selected by an alarm at 10:59 PM which has a single widget in it (a clock I like better than the official Chumby Night Mode Clock). Then, 1 minute later, I have an alarm set to turn the screen to dim.
In the morning, I have to reverse the process, setting an alarm to go off that resets the screen to bright, and then a minute later, turning on my "Wake Up" channel, which runs time (a brighter clock), and weather, along with a radio station I want to wake up to.
In other words, I am using two alarms to change my Chumby into my version of Night mode, and two alarms to go into Day mode. If an alarm could set both brightness and a channel simultaneously, I could eliminate two of the alarms.