ABC, Your Source For Highly Under-Promoted Presidential Debates

Hey, didja catch the Democratic debate yesterday morning on ABC at 9 am? Or 10 am? Or 11 am? Consult your local listings — because, man, was that a tough one to figure out, both for yesterday's debate and for the GOP debate two weeks ago.

For those of you who do fun things on Sunday morning, like sleep in or eat waffles, ABC hosted two special 90-minute broadcasts of "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" for candidate debates (HuffPo liveblog of the GOP version here and yesterday's Dem debate here). You would think that a candidate debate would be a big deal — okay, fine, there's one every other day, but still, it IS about running for president — but between scheduling them at 9 a.m. on a Sunday morning during churchgoing or otherwise non-peak viewing hours, staggering them at random affiliate-ordained times across the country (read: Not broadcasting it live because, hey, there's that Ernest Angley Hour), and — the gravest sin of all — not streaming it on the web, ABC did not seem to care all that much. Yes. NOT STREAMING IT ON THE WEB. Could there have been more of a no-brainer for such an event? Sheesh. (And it's not available in full-form now, either, just in clips; ). Compare and contrast between last month's much-ballyhooed countdown-clock-heralded it's-totally-revolutionary-just-ask-us CNN/YouTube debate — despite actually looking into the meat of the debate beforehand (live-blogging coördinatrix that I am*), I was still surprised to see that they'd had video submissions from viewers (there was nothing on either preview page) (further to that, though, there was apparently an outreach for videos — but this blogger calls it "vlogger fraud").

You would have thought that they'd have gotten it together a bit more for the second round two weeks later, but no. A comment from our liveblog yesterday:

Did anyone else in the New York market get hoodwinked into tuning in at 10am instead of 9am? Last night, the ABC listings per-market showed this airing in NYC at 10am. This morning, that information had been quietly changed to 9am. I called ABC to ask about this and I couldn't get a live person. Anyone else have this experience?

Two weeks earlier, HuffPo liveblogger John Neffinger had a similar experience, leaving a message for an ABC News producer and hearing nothing back (after identifying himself as from HuffPo, so you'd think there would be interest in ensuring that the event was covered). But then again, you would have thought they'd stream it online or otherwise have it available afterward (The Note advertises that the full transcript and a podcast are available here, but damned if I could find where. Once my eyes failed me, I did a search on the page for the word "podcast" but funnily enough, came up empty).

I should add that, in addition to if not burying these debates at least making them a challenge to get to, ABC also fumbled badly on their attempt to capitalize on the "citizen video" craze. As mentioned, there was, as it turns out, a move to solicit user-generated video questions but they were few and boring and apparently most displeasing to the vlogging public (according to vlogger Zennie Abraham, Jr. who carefully lists his grievances in both written and video form here. Abraham rightly points out the absence of Amanda Congdon here — a vlogging staple who, one would think, would be the natural choice for drumming up interest in ABC political coverage via web video (indeed, that would sort of seem to be, on a general level, why she was hired). If there were goals on the video side here, they were missed by a long shot.

So, what's the deal here? Complacency? Even with minimal effort, 2.186 million viewers watched the GOP debate (even though 2.946 tuned in for Tim Russert's giant head — though that would only affect competing markets, not the East Coast, and maybe that's really all they cared to play to?). These are strong numbers, stronger than the MSNBC prime-time AFL-CIO debate and, presumably, stronger than the LOGO debate. But then again, those are cable, and this is ABC — presumably, it can do better (and didn't). Even so, according to ABC the "This Week" numbers were robust enough to top the 25-54 demo numbers "of any Republican debate this cycle," so maybe they're happy enough with that. Ultimately, if ratings was the goal and the extra effort didn't seem to be worth it, well, that's ABC's decision to make. But if the goal is the dissemination of information, to add to the political discourse by holding these debates as a way to delineate candidate positions and get to know a wide field early on — well, if that crazy notion was the goal, it doesn't seem like one that ABC really cared that much to push.

The Iowa Debates -- Tune In and Talk Back [ABC News]
GOP Des Moines Debate Liveblog [HuffPo]
Dem Iowa Debate LiveBlog [HuffPo]

Related:

ABC Debates: ABC Vlogger Fraud- "Vloggercott" ABC [YouTube]

*Nod to the New Yorker.