NEWS
WHO WON THE TV ELECTION?
12/05/2010
"Events, dear boy, events" was Harold Macmillan's famous reply when asked what he feared most as a politician.
Events dramatically changed last night's Media Society debate on 'Who Won the TV Election and Why'.
None of the three main speakers - Craig Oliver, general election editor, BBC, Jonathan Levy, general election editor, Sky News and Ian Rumsey, programme editor ITN - were able to make it.
Understandably events such as the resignation of Gordon Brown and the arrival of David Cameron in Downing Street kept all of them at their ranches making television history rather than merely talking about it.
A largely makeshift panel, some recruited with five minutes notice as they walked through the door at Westminster University, soldiered on as events broke around them.
So who did win the TV election?
First there was general agreement among the media professionals and pundits that it had been a TELEVISION election and that the Prime Ministerial debates has changed the nature of British politics forever. There was even the revelation from one of those involved that they had been very carefully called Prime Ministerial, rather than Leadership debates, very precisely to cut out the likes of Alex Salmond and the Scottish Nationalists.
While the largest audiences were assembled on terrestrial television by the BBC and ITV, 24-hour television news emerged as a big winner.
It was Sky which led the charge in forcing through the first televised debates and in the aftermath of the vote the television news channels came to the fore as the parties used the medium to impose pressure in the negotiations and pass public notes to each other.
One unexplained curiosity - the suggestion that the BBC would have been free to carry the second debate live on one of its main channels as well as on BBC News but chose not to.
If true, was the explanation that the BBC did not want to give such prominence to the extensive Sky News branding on the coverage and anyway wanted to keep its powder dry for the third, decisive debate?
There was general agreement that Alastair Stewart was in third place in the anchor stakes, despite attracting the biggest audience, for sticking too rigidly to the 76 rules and interrupting leaders in mid-sentence when their time was up.
Sky's Adam Boulton did better but the outright winner was David Dimbleby for his experience, gravitas and sheer nous to expand the rules by repeating the original question in search of answers.
Election night was a very different matter, even though the BBC comprehensively won the battle for the audience. The Corporation benefited from the phenomenon that viewers gravitate to the BBC for the big formal occasions.
But if the Media Society audience is any guide the BBC is pushing its luck.
The criticisms included: too many gimmicks, too slow with the results, too little use of specialists on the ground, too much inane studio chatter and an anchor in Dimbleby who lost the plot too many times.
And then there was Das Boot. Andrew Neil's political interviews with Bruce Forsyth and Joan Collins did not go down well.
This piece was posted on Newsline, Mediatel’s daily media news, opinion and analysis service
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