Post by shakedown on Oct 12, 2015 22:38:26 GMT -5
LAS VEGAS — The Republican presidential debates have shattered ratings records by showcasing spirited exchanges between colorful and well-known candidates in a crowded field, with a combative celebrity contestant at the center of the program.
The challenge now for CNN, the host of Tuesday’s first Democratic candidate debate in the 2016 presidential race, is how to get viewers to tune in without the promise of the kind of fireworks created by Donald J. Trump and his Republican rivals.
Not only have the Democratic candidates who will take the stage at the Wynn Las Vegas been far more reluctant to attack one another than their Republican counterparts, but three of the five (those not named Hillary Rodham Clinton or Bernie Sanders) have also barely registered in the polls, which, taken together, probably makes for less of a draw.
Continue reading the main story
RELATED COVERAGE
Preparations for the debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. CNN's producers and moderators said they wanted to establish a different tempo.CNN Hopes to Capture Candidates’ Combative Spirit in G.O.P. DebateSEPT. 15, 2015
President Obama at the White House in September. The two major Democratic candidates for president, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former secretary of state, and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, have suggested they could get more accomplished.
But in interviews, CNN executives and anchors said they planned to take advantage of the smaller, more collegial field to force the Democratic candidates to address their previous statements and current positions — which are sometimes in conflict — even as they also encourage them to confront one another.
Photo
Senator Bernie Sanders, shown on the Wynn marquee, will be one of five candidates participating in the debate Tuesday night. Credit Josh Haner/The New York Times
Jeff Zucker, president of CNN Worldwide, said that with fewer people on the stage than in the first two Republican debates, “our approach will be different.”
“You’ll likely see more direct questioning of each individual candidate,” Mr. Zucker said.
Or, as Anderson Cooper, host of “Anderson Cooper 360” and the debate moderator, explained, “I don’t think these are candidates who have a track record of really taking each other on like how we’ve seen on the Republican side, so you have to factor that into account.”
And in a sign of how the tempo of this debate may differ from the Republican contests, CNN is giving the Democrats two full minutes at the beginning of the broadcast (8:30 to 11 p.m. Eastern time) to introduce themselves, in their own uninterrupted words, to the primary voters, a prime-time spotlight that was not logistically feasible for the unwieldy Republican field.
Mr. Cooper, who measures his debate preparation not in number of questions but in stacks of research material — “I have a couple of inches of paper on my desk” — said he planned to use the opportunity to hold the candidates accountable.
“I believe if somebody says something that is factually incorrect, it’s a good thing to point out what the record shows,” he said. “If somebody is saying something about their record that is not something they’ve said in the past or is different from what they’ve said in the past, then you can point that out.”
The challenge now for CNN, the host of Tuesday’s first Democratic candidate debate in the 2016 presidential race, is how to get viewers to tune in without the promise of the kind of fireworks created by Donald J. Trump and his Republican rivals.
Not only have the Democratic candidates who will take the stage at the Wynn Las Vegas been far more reluctant to attack one another than their Republican counterparts, but three of the five (those not named Hillary Rodham Clinton or Bernie Sanders) have also barely registered in the polls, which, taken together, probably makes for less of a draw.
Continue reading the main story
RELATED COVERAGE
Preparations for the debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. CNN's producers and moderators said they wanted to establish a different tempo.CNN Hopes to Capture Candidates’ Combative Spirit in G.O.P. DebateSEPT. 15, 2015
President Obama at the White House in September. The two major Democratic candidates for president, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former secretary of state, and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, have suggested they could get more accomplished.
But in interviews, CNN executives and anchors said they planned to take advantage of the smaller, more collegial field to force the Democratic candidates to address their previous statements and current positions — which are sometimes in conflict — even as they also encourage them to confront one another.
Photo
Senator Bernie Sanders, shown on the Wynn marquee, will be one of five candidates participating in the debate Tuesday night. Credit Josh Haner/The New York Times
Jeff Zucker, president of CNN Worldwide, said that with fewer people on the stage than in the first two Republican debates, “our approach will be different.”
“You’ll likely see more direct questioning of each individual candidate,” Mr. Zucker said.
Or, as Anderson Cooper, host of “Anderson Cooper 360” and the debate moderator, explained, “I don’t think these are candidates who have a track record of really taking each other on like how we’ve seen on the Republican side, so you have to factor that into account.”
And in a sign of how the tempo of this debate may differ from the Republican contests, CNN is giving the Democrats two full minutes at the beginning of the broadcast (8:30 to 11 p.m. Eastern time) to introduce themselves, in their own uninterrupted words, to the primary voters, a prime-time spotlight that was not logistically feasible for the unwieldy Republican field.
Mr. Cooper, who measures his debate preparation not in number of questions but in stacks of research material — “I have a couple of inches of paper on my desk” — said he planned to use the opportunity to hold the candidates accountable.
“I believe if somebody says something that is factually incorrect, it’s a good thing to point out what the record shows,” he said. “If somebody is saying something about their record that is not something they’ve said in the past or is different from what they’ve said in the past, then you can point that out.”