Political Debates

CNN and Univision drew 10.8 million total average viewers for Sunday night’s Democratic debate between Sen. Bernie Sanders and former vice president Joe Biden, handing CNN its most-watched debate of the election cycle, according to Nielsen Fast National data.

Univision’s Jorge Ramos has backed out of his planned role as one of the moderators of Sunday’s Democratic presidential debate because of possible exposure to the coronavirus, and the event itself has been moved from Phoenix to CNN’s studios in Washington, D.C.

Due to concerns about the spread of coronavirus. there will be no live audience when former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders, both vying for the Democratic nomination, face each other Sunday in Phoenix at the request of both candidates’ campaigns. CNN is scheduled to televise the event.

Gayle King and Norah O’Donnell tried to manage seven presidential candidates fighting for their lives Tuesday, just a week before the South Carolina and Super Tuesday primaries. Particularly at the start, the journalists looked like substitute teachers in front of an unruly school class.

Coming before the Nevada primary vote, Wednesday’s debate drew 12 million viewers tuned in to NBC, with 7.6 million on MSNBC — the third-largest audience ever for a single telecast on the cable network. The debate had more than twice the viewership of two previous Democratic Presidential debates.

The Democrats are heading to the Valley of the Sun next month for the 11th Democratic primary debate of the 2020 election cycle. CNN and Univision will host the debate on March 15, in Phoenix. It will air from 8 to 10 p.m. ET. Additional info, including moderators, venue and criteria, will be released at a later date, according to CNN.

Wednesday’s Democratic debate drops 31% in the key demo from CNN’s last month, attracting 6.5 million viewers.

Citing harassment allegations at the network, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren urged its parent, Comcast, to conduct an independent review.

ABC News is expected to partner with New Hampshire’s WMUR to host another Democratic debate in the days leading up to the 2020 New Hampshire primary, which is scheduled for Feb. 11, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions.

The interactive watch party hosted by WCMH, Nexstar’s NBC affiliate in Columbus, Ohio, was also made available to all the Nexstar TV stations. “So if they were watching on desktop, they could click the options with their mouse, or if they were watching on their phone, they could tap the screen to vote,” said Haley Townsend, WCMH’s digital director.

Sen. Bernie Sanders has said that if he is elected President, he will ban advertising in televised primary debates. That came in a plan released today to get money out of politics. That release came a couple of days after Sanders was released from the hospital after surgery to put stints in a blocked artery.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized ABC and Sinclair for a GOP group’s ad that ran during last night’s Democratic debate in which her picture is shown set on fire. The ad, which ran in cities like New York and Washington, came from the New Faces GOP PAC, which is led by Elizabeth Heng, who last year sought to unseat Democrat Jim Costa in a California House district.

Thursday night’s ABC News debate was smooth sailing for the first two and a half hours, until a group of protesters heckled Vice President Joe Biden during his closing remarks.

ABC News said Thursday it would televise just one night of debates among Democratic hopefuls for 2020, as opposed to the two nights it had previously planned. ABC’s Sept. 12 coverage will feature 10 candidates, reflecting the fact that a good chunk of those campaigning for the job had failed to reach the next level of support to participate in the event, organized by the Democratic National Committee.

Chief anchor George Stephanopoulos, World News Tonight anchor David Muir, correspondent Linsey Davis and Univision anchor Jorge Ramos will moderate the network’s Democratic candidate debate next month. The debate, to be held in Houston, will take only one night unless more than 10 Democratic candidates qualify. As it currently stands, 10 candidates have qualified to participate.

Facing elimination in the next round, Democratic candidates sought to stand out by lashing out, and the network played up the drama.

With frustratingly tiny and rigidly enforced response time, outsize attention to fringe candidates and divisive questions — some of which could have been framed by the Republican National Committee — the first Detroit debate was a lost opportunity to inform the voting public. The debate format is an embarrassment. Here’s how to make it better.

“In the end, the candidates came together around a unifying message: Click ‘like’ and subscribe!” Stephen Colbert joked Wednesday.

Trump used Twitter on Wednesday to attack CNN’s Don Lemon performance in Wednesday’s Democratic debate. After insulting Lemon’s intelligence, the president said the CNN anchor had insinuated that he was a racist, “when in fact I am ‘the least racist person in the world.’ ” Trump was apparently quoting himself.

CNN’s coverage of the 10 candidates falls by more than 40% over the first debate of the primary cycle in late June.

At the second Democratic presidential debate, which will unfold over two nights in Detroit on Tuesday and Wednesday, viewers will note some differences compared to the first debates.  CNN pledges not to ask questions that require a show of hands by the politicians or that confine all the contenders to a one-word “yes” or “no” answer.

NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt, who was viewed by Americans as the most trusted anchor in television last fall, made a strong impression on the 1,860 respondents who participated in a new Hollywood Reporter/Morning Consult survey on last week’s Democratic presidential candidate debates.

The technical glitch, in the middle of the debate, left viewers and candidates confused by crosstalk apparently caused by a failure to turn off the microphones of NBC personalities who had left the stage.

The debate will unfold over four hours Wednesday and Thursday, 10 candidates each night, and will air on NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo. “Primary debates are a big prestige event for every network,” said Mark Lukasiewicz, dean of Hofstra University’s school of communication, who had Jones’ job four years ago. “It’s why every network tries to get one and tries to get as many as they can. It’s a branding opportunity.”

NBC executives had been preparing to handle 20 presidential candidates over two nights of debate when the current occupant of the Oval Office introduced a new twist by threatening to live-tweet next week’s Democratic face-off.

The first Democratic primary debates for the 2020 presidential election will be held later this month in Miami across two nights, and aired on NBC, and now we know which of the (many) candidates will be sharing a stage with whom.

The debate, shown on NBC News networks, will unfold over two nights in Miami on June 26 and June 27. For each night, Holt will anchor the first hour, where he’ll be joined by Savannah Guthrie of Today show and Jose Diaz-Balart of Telemundo. The second hour will feature MSNBC opinion host Rachel Maddow and Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd.