EARLY EDITION!
Debate night in America | | NBC will raise the curtain on the first Democratic primary debate of the 2020 cycle at 9 p.m. ET. As the NYT's Michael Grynbaum put it, this debate is "the starting gun for a media frenzy that is poised to outstrip even the coverage of the raucous 2016 campaign."
So this is a special debate preview edition of the newsletter -- if you're opening this email after the debate has ended, click here or scroll down for the second half of the letter, with all the day's other media news.
Three networks
NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo are carrying the debate live. And the live stream will be everywhere: Network websites, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. This is going to make the events hard to miss. But it's also going to make the total audience size hard to measure. At 11 p.m., you'll find post-debate coverage all over the place... Details below...
Ratings forecast
Predictions are all over the place. Some TV insiders say 7 million. Others say 17 million! The total viewer # for night one will tell us something about the electorate's level of enthusiasm about the 2020 race.
My humble guess: The three TV channels combined will total 8 million viewers on night one and 10 million viewers on night two, when there are a greater number of well-known candidates on stage.
Here's my reasoning: These debates will be much bigger than the equivalent events from 2008. Democrats are on edge right now due to Trump. But there's reason to believe that the eye-popping Trump-fueled ratings from the 2016 cycle were an anomaly.
Remember the very first GOP debate with Trump? Fox scored 24 million viewers. It was a high water mark for cable news. The next GOP debate, on CNN, averaged 23 million. Without someone like Trump on stage, there's no way the Dems can come close to those totals.
The Dem debates in 2016 were ALSO high-rated. The first one of the cycle, in October 2015, netted almost 16 million viewers for CNN. But TV viewership and campaign interest tends to be higher in the fall than in the early summer.
So that's not a perfect comparison. But the 2008 comps don't hold up very well, either. The first Dem debate of that cycle, in May 2007, averaged 2.3 million viewers for MSNBC. This time around, the debate will be on three channels, not one, and will span two nights. My, how the political world has changed...
>> Speaking of that... This is great read from WaPo's Ashley Parker: "How 2016 — and Trump — ushered in the era of the mega-debate."
Debate one: Who's on stage
Elizabeth Warren will be the focal point. Because of a random draw, she will be "the only candidate polling in the top five on the stage" on night one, CNN's Dan Merica writes. So the lower-tier candidates want and need to land some "moments." As Cory Booker's campaign manager Addisu Demissie put it, "Our aim on a crowded stage is straightforward: Cory will look to introduce himself to the voters just tuning in to the race." | | Who's offstage
"NBC will have an offstage timekeeper trying to ensure fairness in how each candidate is treated," the AP's David Bauder wrote earlier this week. "It's a walk on a tightrope. The entire event is, frankly; one mistake can swivel unwanted attention to the network." More...
The rules
Via Kyle Blaine's how-to-watch guide: "Candidates have one minute to respond to questions and 30 seconds for follow-ups, according to NBC News. Each two-hour debate will be divided into five parts with four commercial breaks. Candidates will not have the opportunity to make opening remarks but will be given time for closing statements."
The peacock net's production
More than 300 NBCU staffers are in Miami... The debate stage is "dominated by 600 square feet of screens displaying a wraparound image of the White House," Grynbaum wrote. "Slim Plexiglas lecterns, emblazoned with the presidential seal, stood in a tight semicircle, a concession to the crammed slate of candidates..."
Too many moderators?
"NBC's decision to include five of its own people also crowds the stage," Bauder wrote in his preview piece. Lester Holt and Savannah Guthrie will lead the overall event. The teams of Guthrie + Jose Diaz-Balart and Chuck Todd + Rachel Maddow "will moderate an hour each night, with Holt and Guthrie a constant presence. Some debate experts wonder if this will hurt the event's flow and cost opportunities for conversational follow-ups..."
The Maddow factor
Re-upping Sarah Ellison's WaPo story from the other day: "MSNBC is both a news channel and face of the Resistance. How will that impact the Democratic primary debate?"
Ellison wrote that Rachel Maddow's presence on stage is "somewhat" controversial and is the subject of criticism from Sean Hannity et al. And she noted that NBC officials stand up for Maddow: Rashida Jones said she's "first and foremost a journalist. It's not her first rodeo. She did this before in 2016 and has been pretty successful in this area..."
Coverage notes and quotes
-- Ben Smith's brand new column: "The rules of debate spin are changing. And the media is losing control." He says "this is the first presidential primary in a mature social media world..."
-- WaPo's Erik Wemple tweeted: NBC "received 1,200 media credential requests" for the debate and issued 700 credentials...
-- Second screen strategy? The CBS News streaming service CBSN says it'll be airing "real-time analysis and fact-checking live" DURING the debate...
-- Vanessa Friedman's math: Each debate "will feature about 10 minutes of talking per candidate -- and 110 minutes of standing. The visuals are going to matter..."
-- The question in the Drudge Report's headline: "How nasty will it get?"
Post-show specials
After each debate, CNN will be live with analysis all night and into the morning...
Shannon Bream, Ed Henry and Bret Baier will anchor post-game coverage on Fox from 11pm til 1am ET...
MSNBC's coverage will also run from 11 til 1, and will be led by Brian Williams and Nicolle Wallace, featuring Chris Hayes, Lawrence O'Donnell and Chris Matthews. And "Morning Joe" is in Miami with a live audience on Thursday and Friday mornings...
CBSN will have a special from 11 til midnight...
BUT HOW IMPORTANT ARE THESE DEBATES, REALLY?
Up for debate?
In this 538 chat about the debates, Clare Malone put it this way: "Presidential debates are not real debates. They are chances for candidates to slot in their talking points. They are pseudo-events — PR opportunities manufactured by parties and news organizations to provide turning points and tension during a long slog. They are only meaningful because we decide to give them meaning."
>> Here is Harry Enten's analysis for CNN.com: "When primary debates really matter (and when they don't)"
"Make news early"
Paul Begala's advice to candidates, in the form of a mock "rules" memo on CNN.com: "Make news early. Your first at bat is the most important. Viewers and voters can only process so much..."
The aftermath
UCLA professor Lynn Vavreck's piece for The Upshot is titled "It's Not So Much the Debate. It's the Days After the Debate." Her point: Notice the story lines "that become set in the aftermath..."
Will Trump live-tweet?
That's one of the wild cards that past debate producers generally didn't have to consider. Per the NYT, NBC does not have "a specific contingency plan for that." Jones said: "Anything that happens before and during the debate, we put through the same news lines of, 'Is this worth incorporating into the conversation?'"
 Apple's "candidate guide"
On Wednesday, ahead of debate night, the company announced a new feature in the Apple News app called a "candidate guide," with basic facts, bios and positions on key issues.
The guide is "curated by the team of Apple News editors," using info from a variety of news providers, from CNN to Axios, Vox to Fox. Here's my story about it...
Tweet of the day
NPR's Scott Detrow witnessed John Hickenlooper arriving at the debate site and being asked by a security staffer, "Are you here to pick up press credentials?" Hickenlooper responded: I'm a candidate."
Later in the day, after Detrow's observation went viral, Hickenlooper tweeted: "Last time, we elected the most famous candidate. Let's try something new." | |
IN OTHER NEWS...
Long, hot Mueller summer?
Politico's crew notes that Robert Mueller's planned appearance on July 17 sets up "a nearly monthlong period of intense political suspense and speculation:"
"Mueller and impeachment are now assured to be the dominant and likely singular conversation from now until the August recess. Is July 17 the beginning of impeachment? Or just another event the leadership will be able to blow by?"
What is it with Trump and Tivo?
TiVo introduced the first digital video recorder in 1999. Keep that in mind while you read about this, via CNN's Betsy Klein: "President Trump extolled the virtues of TiVo to a crowd at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference Wednesday, calling it 'better than television.' He recalled watching a segment on Fox News on a woman who benefitted from his administration's Right to Try policy and said he wanted his wife, first lady Melania Trump, to watch. 'I said, you have to see this – it's great invention, it's called TiVo, ok? I don't want to be advertising, but you know, it's like better than television cause television, you never see it again, here, you play it back, I played it back. And my wife said, That is amazing,' he said."
Trump has raved about TiVo many times before, but he's evidently still thrilled by the tech...
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- Thursday planner via CNN's Ariane de Vogue: The Supreme Court "will issue the remaining opinions of the term on Thursday. The justices are, therefore, expected to issue opinions in two big cases tomorrow, census and partisan gerrymandering..."
-- "Reddit has 'quarantined' its subreddit 'The_Donald,' the most popular section of its site for supporters of President Trump because of what it said were 'threats of violence against police and public officials,'" Donie O'Sullivan reports... (CNN)
-- Mark Levin's "Unfreedom of the Press" is No. 1 on the NYT's nonfiction best-seller list for a fifth straight week... (Twitter)
Drowning victims on the front page
The NYT published a photo of the father and daughter who died while crossing the Rio Grande on the fronnt page of Wednesday's paper. Some European papers did the same. A reader in London sent along this picture from a newsstand Wednesday evening... The headline read "THE PICTURE THAT SHAMES AMERICA." | |
Mika's message
Melania Trump traveled to the border last year to "check on the children when the separations first came out," Mika Brzezinski pointed out on Wednesday morning. Now, she said, addressing FLOTUS, there are "children in squalor, with the flu spreading rampantly around them, with children in danger -- on your watch. So for Melania and Ivanka, this is not 'being best.' This is not a good look, and history will show. You will go down in history as having done nothing about this. I hope that you can live with that."
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- Laura Hazard Owen's latest: "SmartNews has shown it can drive traffic. Can it drive subscriptions too?" (NiemanLab)
-- Farhad Manjoo went to Cannes Lions and wrote a fun column about all the "high-end schmoozing..." (NYT)
A "rare show of unity" by rival media execs in Australia
"The bosses of Australia's three biggest media organizations" gathered in Canberra on Wednesday "to call for better laws to protect press freedom" following recent police raids in the country, the Australian Associated Press reports. The event at the country's National Press Club was a "rare show of unity..." The execs also "stressed the need to convince Australians that press freedom is personally crucial to them..."
WaPo in Español
The Washington Post's next expansion is in another language: The newsroom is launching a twice-a-week Spanish language podcast and the opinion section is beginning to publish pieces in Spanish. Here's my full story, with details from Emilio Garcia-Ruiz and Eli Lopez...
>> The podcast is envisioned as a new entry point for potential Post listeners and subscribers...
>> Some op-eds will be "commissioned and written in Spanish," Lopez said, so it's a step beyond just translating existing pieces from English...
Bob Ley leaving ESPN
Bob Ley, the longest-tenured anchor at ESPN and a journalistic legend, is retiring. His announcement on Wednesday came nearly a year after he took an extended leave of absence. He was back on "Outside the Lines" for a toast and one final sign-off on Wednesday. Here's my full story... | | >> Per ESPN.com, Jeremy Schaap and Ryan Smith "'will handle the bulk of anchoring duties' for OTL going forward..."
>> Richard Deitsch tweeted: "ESPN is already a different place but it will truly be a different place without Ley." He'll be out with a fresh podcast about Ley overnight...
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
-- On stage at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Mark Zuckerberg "said he wants to create more external standards so that private companies are not making morally complex decisions by themselves..." (Forbes)
-- Laney Pope emails: A group of Google employees are urging the San Francisco Pride parade organizer to bar Google from the celebration in an effort to put "pressure on the internet giant to overhaul its handling of hate speech" online, Josh Eidelson reports... (Bloomberg)
-- Kaya Yurieff emails: Ads are coming to Instagram's popular Explore page, one of the last ad-free places on the platform... (CNN Business)
You can now perform your own YouTube whack-a-mole
Kaya Yurieff emails: In a blog post on Wednesday, YouTube said users can now tell it to stop suggesting videos from a specific channel. The company has long faced criticism for allowing misinformation, conspiracy theories and extremist views to spread on its platform -- and for recommending that type of content to users. It's been shown that people who come to YouTube to watch videos on innocuous subjects or mainstream news have been served up recommendations pushing them toward extreme content.
On the menu next to a video on the homepage or "Up Next" section, users can now click "Don't recommend channel." After that, they "should" no longer see YouTube suggest videos from that channel. The move puts the onus on users rather than on YouTube, and there could be many accounts users may want to hide... Bloomberg has details here...
FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR
-- Brian Steinberg's profile of Dan Abrams says "Abrams is working on a way to keep up with the nation's increasing fascination with the overlap of law, media and politics..." (Variety)
-- Fascinating Ben Sisario piece about a frustration for "fans of classical music in the streaming age:" The algorithms of Spotify, Apple and Amazon "are carefully engineered to steer listeners to pop hits, and Schubert and Puccini can get lost in the metadata..." (NYT)
-- Easy listening: "Subscription e-book and audiobook service Scribd is unveiling a new content type that it calls a Snapshot — a distillation of a nonfiction book's key points, which can be read or listened to in 15 minutes or less," TechCrunch's Anthony Ha reports... (TechCrunch)
Blumhouse developing a TV miniseries about the creation of CNN
Lisa Napoli's book "Up All Night: CNN and the Birth of 24 Hour News" is coming out next spring, in time for CNN's 40th anniversary. Now the book has spawned a potential TV series: Jason Blum's Blumhouse Productions has optioned the rights to the book "as a limited series," with Danny Strong on board to adapt, Publishers Weekly reports...
| | Madonna's powerful statement against gun violence
"Madonna has a message: 'We need to wake up.' In words and in haunting imagery, her call-to-action is woven through the music video for her new single, 'God Control,' a striking statement against gun violence," Lisa Respers France writes. "The video begins with a warning for viewers and shows people, including Madonna, being gunned down with an assault weapon in a nightclub." Here's what Madonna told France about the video...
FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE
By Lisa Respers France:
-- Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul have sparked "Breaking Bad" reunion buzz.
-- Beth Chapman, "Dog the Bounty Hunter" star, died Wednesday. She was 51.
-- Olivia Munn says she broke out in a rash after sharing her #MeToo story.
"The Current War" now slated for October 11
Remember how "The Current War," starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Thomas Edison, became a casualty of the Weinstein scandal? Well now the film is back. "The Current War" "ended up being purchased by Lantern Entertainment amid the Weinstein Co.'s bankruptcy case. It will be the first film from 101 Studios, which bought the US distribution rights from Lantern," Sandra Gonzalez writes. "The movie, from director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, is now set for release October 11 and a new trailer was released Wednesday..."
FOR THE RECORD, PART SIX
-- The first trailer for the final season of Netflix's "Orange Is the New Black" is out...
-- And the Dixie Chicks have announced their first new album in 13 years...
| | | Thank you for reading! See you tomorrow at our normal time after the second night of the #DemDebates... | | | |
