Re: WHDH faces big debate: Bush-Gore or baseball?

[Mike Thomas <nostatic@earthlink.net>]

Running debates and such on all the major networks is a bit of an anachronism these
days.  Way back when, TV's only picked up a few off-air channels, so running
debates on all the major networks made sense, that way everyone had access to
them.  Today, TV viewers have dozens of channels to choose from, either off of
cable or a dish.  Furthermore, if you are one of the few that does not have
cable/dish access, you can still pull in at least a dozen signals with a pair of
rabbit ears.

Full saturation is simply not necessary anymore.  If someone really wants to see a
debate, it will run on a variety of news networks, the C-SPANS, at least one major
network and Public Television.  In the case of NBC, they own other cable outlets,
so putting the debates there and running alternative programming on the main signal
makes sense.  There are plenty of choices for political programming both off the
air and on cable/dish.  If one or two of the major networks decide to air something
else, it's really no big deal, IMHO.

Mike Thomas

Chris Beckwith wrote:

> This is, I suspect, the first step towards marginalizing debate coverage in
> favor of regular programming on the commercial networks as a matter of course.
> It would be not at all surprising to see coverage shift to PBS and the cable
> news networks only as of the 2004 election.  Can the State of the Union address
> be far behind?
>
> Take care,
> Chris