ABC takes the food fight out of debating

[brooklynite]

Politico

ABC's ground rules and moderators’ style Thursday night in Houston cut down on the feeding frenzy nature of past televised debates. The network offered the candidates 15 more seconds for answers and rebuttals than were allotted on NBC and CNN and the moderators tended to avoid cutting off the candidates in mid-sentence, which was the case during the 2nd debate in July.

The result was a contest heavier on policy differences and lighter on the kinds of finger-pointing and quips that marked the two previous rounds of Democratic debates.

In the midst of it all, longtime Hillary Clinton aide Philippe Reines praised ABC for having “learned from the best & worst of the previous two.”

Some of this was due to the gravitas of George Stephanopoulos and David Muir, the ABC stalwarts whose deft handling of the exchanges between candidates gave the debate a smoothness lacking in earlier rounds. The two veterans were joined by ABC correspondent Linsey Davis and Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, whose pointed questions drew more attention.

[True Blue American]

1. To think

George started out with Clinton and has matured so much

Chuck Todd is the worst interviewer on T V! His constant smirk and looking down for his next gotcha question makes me not watch him at all. Tapper is good at that too.

Mathews surprised me last night reading Biden’s actual words back to Castro. Castro was on CNN and they allowed him to lie without correcting him.

[Cha]

2. Well Good on Matthews.. Thanks

for that, TBA!

[hlthe2b]

3. I was very pleasantly surprised at how professional and effective the moderation...

They left their egos and home and focused on delivering an effective forum to the voters' benefit.

[True Blue American]

4. Best so far.

Pure Professionals.

[jcgoldie]

5. I agree they did a good job

Even though it left some folks out of the loop for long stretches because 10 people is still too many, it was a much more meaningful debate on policy.

[wysimdnwyg]

6. I think a lot of it was intentional

CNN clearly was after the fights and bickering. Not only did their format encourage it, the moderators did so as well. NBCs debates were better than CNN, but they were first and still getting their bearings on handing a 10-person Democratic debate. ABC learned a lot from the mistakes of both other networks, and it showed. It wasn't perfect, but I'm not sure how you make it much better given the multitude of candidates. Let's see how it goes next month if they split in two with 5-6 candidates each night. (I honestly don't believe they will have to, as I foresee some dropouts from this group before then - looking at you, Castro.)

[dalton99a]

7. +1. It was all about ratings for Jeff Zucker