Jake Tapper of CNN was a moderator of a March 13 Democratic town hall event in which Hillary Clinton appears to have gotten an unfair advantage. As disclosed earlier this week in a WikiLeaks trove of emails relating to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, the Clinton campaign received word from then-CNN contributor Donna Brazile that a death-penalty question was on tap for the event. “To find out that someone was unethically helping the Clinton campaign — tipping them off — is just very, very upsetting,” Tapper said.
Presidential Debate 2 scored about 60.3 million viewers last night, failing to eclipse the historic 84 million who’d tuned in for the first debate last month.
A debate full of personal swipes exchanged by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton also included Trump’s snarky suggestion that moderators Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz were favoring Clinton.
CNN, ABC Feuding Over Next Debate?
Anderson Cooper — who has just signed a new long-term deal with CNN — and ABC’s Martha Raddatz are moderating Sunday’s town-hall debate together, and, sources say, the rival network anchors are at odds over who gets to grill the candidates on the most blistering topics.
ABC News and CNN are both using Facebook to solicit feedback ahead of next weekend’s town-hall style presidential debate.
In early numbers, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox averaged a combined 42.4 million total viewers for last night’s first presidential debate from 9-11 p.m. NBC led with an average 15.6 million viewers, followed by ABC with 11.6 million, CBS with 10.2 million, and Fox with 5 million. Nielsen will release final stats later this afternoon.
Exclusives
Lester Holt asked questions about job creation and home-grown terrorism in Monday’s first debate, and also hit on specific issues regarding the birther controversy, Trump’s decision not to release his tax returns and Clinton’s email scandal. The sole journalist onstage, Holt was responsible for the questions asked and for steering the conversation.
As part of what it calls its “ongoing commitment to inform and empower Hispanic America across the nation,” Univision Communications Inc. (UCI) today announced that it is going to provide […]
News outlets and fact-checking sites can separate truth from fable after a debate, but it falls to the moderator to interject in the moment when a candidate lies.
As Debate Nears, Spotlight Is On Lester Holt
Dylan Byers: “On Monday, the NBC Nightly News anchor will preside over what may be the most highly anticipated presidential debate in American history. If Holt does anything less than a perfect job, he will likely be pilloried like Matt Lauer and the CNBC anchors before him. But if he gives a command performance, he will, at least for a moment, be a national icon.”
The price to take part isn’t cheap – though it is considerably less dear than a Super Bowl berth. CBS is seeking between $200,000 and $225,000 for a 30-second ad during its post-debate coverage, according to people familiar with the matter. The cable news networks, meanwhile, are prodding advertisers who want to run commercials adjacent to the debate to buy larger packages of ad inventory in exchange for the access.
There’s hardly a platform on which Americans won’t be able to see Hillary Clinton squaring off against Donald Trump in the three presidential debates. Twitter is now in the game via a deal with Bloomberg to live stream its coverage, and the form will be the same as its streaming of NFL games.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Sept. 26 debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is expected to reduce ratings for ESPN’s Monday Night Football. Ad buyers are predicting about 10.3 million to 11 million viewers, which would be down 15% to 20% from last year’s average Monday Night Football rating. Journal subscribers can read the full story here.
The deal will cover the three presidential debates and the vice-presidential debate, too. The streams build on earlier live streaming of the party conventions, and they won’t carry any advertising, as ABC News wants to see how many viewers engage with the content on the outside platform.
In a series of interviews over the past week, the Republican nominee has asserted that “the system is being rigged” against him. The first of three scheduled debates between Trump and Hillary Clinton will be held on Sept. 26, with NBC’s Lester Holt as the journalist questioning the candidates.
In an interview Monday on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Donald Trump predicted the upcoming presidential debates would be “very unfair,” and suggested doing away with moderators entirely. “Let Hillary and I sit there and just debate,” he said.
NBC’s Lester Holt will moderate the first scheduled presidential debate on Sept. 26. ABC’s Martha Raddatz and CNN’s Anderson Cooper are doing the second and Fox News Channel’s Chris Wallace the third.
With only three presidential debates and one vice presidential contest, some network stars are sure to be left out in the cold in what will be must-watch moments of the campaign season. Picking debate moderators is always a tough business, and today’s polarized, increasingly opinion-based media raises serious questions about whether objective, trusted and credible moderators can be found.
Roger Ailes, the former Fox News chairman ousted last month over charges of sexual harassment, is advising Donald Trump as he begins to prepare for the all-important presidential debates this fall. Ailes is aiding Trump’s team as it turns its attention to the first debate with Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, on Sept. 26, according to four people briefed on the move, who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.
BEVERLY HILLS (AP) — Stephen Colbert, who capitalized on the political conventions with live airings of his late-night show, will do the same for the presidential and vice presidential debates. […]
ABC, CBS and Fox News have expressed interest in hosting a debate between presidential candidates Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.
That possibility surfaced Wednesday, even if in a jocular tone, in an indirect exchange between the Republican billionaire real estate mogul and the senator who Hillary Clinton hasn’t been able to bump from the Democratic presidential sweepstakes.
WJLP, KJWP Offer OTA Debate To Candidates
Robert Mc Allan, president of the two stations in New York/New Jersey and Wilmington, Del./Philadelphia, says he’s disappointed that the majority of long-form exposure given the presidential candidates from both parties has been in the debates presented solely over cable and satellite, leaving nearly 1.5 million over-the-air households in the New York and Philadelphia markets literally in the dark. He hopes to rectify that.
A new report breaks down how long they’ve lasted, who’s talked the least and who’s talked the most (one guess). And just think, it’s only March. Figure on a long, hot summer.
One week after ratings soared to a 2016 high with an insult-ridden Republican debate on Fox News Channel, viewership fell off about 30% for CNN’s rather civil get-together last night.
Is it all too much? In fact, this year’s debate schedule — at least 13 for Republicans and 10 for Democrats — is considerably shorter than in years past. Republicans debated 20 times during the 2012 GOP primary season; Democrats faced off 26 times during the 2008 primary campaign. While viewership has cooled since a whopping 24 million people watched the first GOP debate of the 2016 campaign last August, considerable audiences still are tuning in.
Many Republicans view Univision as a hostile news organization, with its unapologetic pro-immigration reform stance and ties to Hillary Clinton. But on Wednesday night the network’s two top anchors, Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas, along with Washington Post correspondent Karen Tumulty, tried to shed that image, while also previewing what a potential general election debate might look like between Clinton and Donald Trump.
Wednesday afternoon, Univision requested that AT&T continue to distribute its signal to AT&T’s U-Verse subscribers for 24 hours immediately following the conclusion of Wednesday night’s Washington Post-Univision Democratic Presidential Debate. Univision said it “is hopeful that AT&T will show good faith in the parties’ ongoing [retransmission consent] negotiations by treating Univision’s top-rated Hispanic content on par with its English-language broadcasting counterparts in order for the companies to continue to collaborate in serving the growing U.S. Hispanic community.”
