The WSJ's Brooks Barnes looks at the other election happening next week: Which anchor to watch on Election night? Tuesday will be the first election presided over by these anchors — the big turnover in the anchor chairs happened after 2004 — and as Barnes says, dramatically, "the stakes are high." This is a long block of prime-time, live coverage, and "advertisers and cable and broadcast rivals will be watching closely to see how each handles the hot seat." Barnes also doesn't count out the cable nets — Fox (with Brit Hume), CNN (with Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper, Lou Dobbs and Paula Zahn ) and MSNBC (with Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann plus other MSNBC types) — all of which will be blasting election-night graphics in your face as the crawl crawls and the very very serious election-night music thrums forebodingly in the background.
Each anchor will have trusty, high-wattage sidekicks: Williams will have Tom Brokaw; Gibson will have George Stephanopoulos; Couric will have Bob Schieffer. Edge: Williams, definitely. He also has an edge since he's covered for MSNBC in the past, but notes that the real challenge will be in making the all-important election calls that color the maps and make people either look smart or really, really stupid, depending on whether you should believe exit polling (which was oddly unreliable in the last election). Says Williams: "Getting it wrong is forever. Getting it four minutes late is forgivable." The networks are guarding against that by making no calls until polls close (or are "scheduled to close" the WSJ says non-specifically); also, each network will send two reps "to a 'quarantine room' at an undisclosed location in New York City to comb through exit-poll data."
Here's something the WSJ doesn't mention: What will happen at 11 pm when Jon Stewart is on? I'd be curious to see what kind of ratings shift occurs at that point. I predict that he'll pull huge numbers that night (and, depending on how they use that hour-block, Colbert as well though it's Stewart who is associated with coverage of elections. But either way expect some migration of viewers from the other channels to Comedy Central).
NB: Here's a fun quote, given one throwaway line: "There could be problems in some states with new electronic ballots." Crazy how that's just accepted as a fact of electoral life in the years after hanging chads and Ohio eyebrow-raising. The week before an election, you'd think there'd be a leeetle more concern on that point.
Photo from WSJ.com
