Midterm Elections Offer Rookie Anchors New Battleground
By BROOKS BARNES
November 1, 2006; Page B1
Add another hotly contested race to the list for Tuesday's elections: Brian, Charlie or Katie?
While NBC's Brian Williams, ABC's Charles Gibson and CBS's Katie Couric have all settled into their new roles as evening news anchors, Tuesday's midterm elections mark their inaugural efforts at presiding over prime-time election results. The stakes are high. Live coverage of national elections is a defining event for news organizations, and viewers, advertisers and cable and broadcast rivals will be watching closely to see how each handles the hot seat.
Ratcheting up pressure are the special demands of this Election Day. Midterm elections are typically sedate affairs that are more important locally than nationally. But this year the results could lead to a seismic shift in political power. With control of both the House and Senate up for grabs, the television audience is expected to be particularly large, with the networks competing with Fox News Channel, CNN and MSNBC for viewers.
The rookies -- particularly Mr. Gibson and Ms. Couric because Mr. Williams has anchored lots of MSNBC election coverage -- have a series of especially difficult races to call. More than a dozen important ones remain too close to predict, raising the specter of recounts. There could be problems in some states with new electronic ballots. Meanwhile, the networks' exit polls, crucial to their system of calling races, are likely to be fuzzy as more people make use of absentee ballots.
The new anchors have strong memories of their predecessors' botched calls in the 2000 presidential election, and they say in interviews that they are determined to get the calls right this time. "If we have learned anything from the last few outings, it is to call no race before its time," Mr. Williams says. "Getting it wrong is forever. Getting it four minutes late is forgivable."
In a change from the 2002 midterm elections, the networks promise they won't project a winner in any state until after all of that state's polls are scheduled to close. In a first, each network has also agreed to send two representatives to a "quarantine room" at an undisclosed location in New York City to comb through exit-poll data. The goal: to prevent early exit-poll data -- which is often unreliable -- from leaking to the Internet, and to monitor the results in a vacuum, without access to a bank of TV screens tuned to various pundits predicting outcomes.
All three anchors have top billing, but each has a veteran co-pilot. Mr. Williams will be joined by his predecessor, Tom Brokaw. Mr. Gibson will have George Stephanopoulos, the anchor of ABC's "This Week" Sunday news program and a former senior aide to President Clinton. Ms. Couric's predecessor, Bob Schieffer, will appear with her.
ABC, CBS and NBC have spent recent weeks conducting intense preparations for a relatively small amount of on-air coverage. Each network plans an hour-long live special at 10 p.m. EST, with another live broadcast on the West Coast at 10 p.m. PST, the same amount of time the networks dedicated to the last midterms.
The three anchors will be judged not only on ratings but also on content and their ability to perform on the spot. One particularly tricky moment for rookie anchors to master: bringing the newscast back from a commercial or a local break. Called a "reset" in TV parlance, the anchor must sum up the news so far in a pithy sentence.
In their normal slots, Mr. Williams holds a commanding lead. For the week ended Oct. 27, Mr. Williams attracted an average of 8.9 million viewers to "Nightly News" on General Electric Co.'s NBC, according to Nielsen Media Research. At "World News" on Walt Disney Co.'s ABC, Mr. Gibson averaged 8.4 million. Ms. Couric averaged 7.3 million on "Evening News" on CBS Corp.'s CBS.
But unlike the audience for presidential coverage, when the networks remain on the air all evening, viewership for the midterm coverage is typically affected by the strength of the show immediately before. By that measure, ABC has the strongest lead-in with "Dancing With the Stars."
"I personally hope a lot of 'Dancing' fans love politics," says Mr. Stephanopoulos, although they apparently didn't earlier this year, when MSNBC pundit Tucker Carlson was the first "star" voted off the show.
All the new network anchors hope to put individual stamps on their coverage. Ms. Couric, for instance, says her broadcast will strive to be "more accessible and meaningful for regular people." She has been pushing producers to interview average voters over stuffy experts. "Clearly we need to communicate some really critical information, but I think we can have some fun too," she says.
Mr. Williams has something quite different in mind. "I would like to harness some of the shop talk that goes on during our commercial breaks" between political junkies such as Mr. Brokaw and Tim Russert, NBC's senior political analyst. "That's actually really good television," Mr. Williams says. He also plans to pay close attention to potential problems with computerized voting machines. NBC and its sister cable network MSNBC are partnering with an organization that operates a toll-free hotline for voters to report irregularities.
Over at ABC, Mr. Gibson will have the most network air time. While Ms. Couric will go off the air and Mr. Williams will move to MSNBC, Mr. Gibson will continue reporting on ABC's "Nightline."
New this time around at every network is a plethora of news offerings on the Internet and cellphones. CBS plans to update its Web site every 90 seconds, while ABC says it will provide updates every minute. ABC will also allow college and high school students to file Internet "perspectives" via video cellphone, Web cam or camcorder. NBC plans extensive additional material on MSNBC.com, along with original newscasts for mobile phones.
"Online was something that was just beginning the last time around," says Jon Banner, executive producer of "World News." "This time we are truly flooding the zone."
I call bullshit
News Networks Install "Quarantine Room" For Election Night: No One Gets Out With Exit Poll Info...
Washington Post Howard Kurtz Posted November 1, 2006 11:58 PM
READ MORE: Drudge Report
Not new bullshit
Not anywhere new bullshit
"And the public records, I can’t emphasize enough how important they are. In San Diego in the June 6 election, the event log, the audit log that was obtained by a citizen named Bruce Sims, shows the voting machine dialing out to Diebold at 9:31 p.m. during the count on election night. These are the kinds of things that show up.
AMY GOODMAN: Wait, explain that.
BEV HARRIS: Yes. It’s difficult to explain.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, the machine dialing out?
BEV HARRIS: The machine dialed out and made a remote connection to Diebold at 9:31 p.m. during the count. And when you say, “Explain it,” I don’t know of any legitimate explanation.
AMY GOODMAN: So, what happened in that case?
BEV HARRIS: Interestingly enough, as we find citizens out there gathering these, public officials are in many cases — and San Diego is one — not following the law, not following the regulations. The first thing we have to do is find out if they even are following them — they aren’t there — and then we need to take action to enforce the law and get them taken out of office. It’s very difficult, because there’s very little will to enforce and there are very few consequences for election officials who fail to follow the law."
Special message to local "reporters"
F*#k you, you corporate tools.
