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MEET THE PRESS DEBATE VICTORY

January 4, 2012 By Tammy Haddad

The only people benefiting as much from the debates as the candidates are the shows and networks who are hosting them.  Meet The Press, leaped ahead of the traditional New Hampshire ABC News Saturday night debate by cutting a deal with Facebook and locking in the candidates early. Mediabistro’s Chris Ariens gets an early look at the questions sent into Facebook.

“Now that Iowa is behind us, it’s on to New Hampshire. ABC airs a GOP debate Saturday night and NBC has one Sunday morning — both with one less candidate — as a special “Meet the Press” and inconjunction with Facebook.

MTP goes live at 9amET each Sunday, but airs at various times on NBC affiliates across the country. But this Sunday, the debate will also air live on MSNBC at 9am. At the same time, this page will be up and running for Facebook users to ask questions and share thoughts about the candidates.

For the past few months NBC News and Facebook have been asking voting-age users what they think is the most pressing issue facing them. Here’s the break down:

In New Hampshire:
Economy: 58%
Federal Budget Deficit: 19%
Health Care: 11%
Illegal Immigration: 6%
Foreign Policy: 5%

Nationally:
Economy: 56%
Health Care: 12%
Illegal Immigration: 9%
Foreign Policy: 5%
Federal Budget Deficit: 5%.

The NBC News Facebook Debate on “Meet the Press” will also:
• air live and re-air on MSNBC
• air live on New England Cable News (NECN) throughout New Hampshire and New England
• stream live and be available on demand on msnbc.com and on facebook.com/Uspolitics”

Filed Under: 2012 Election, News Media

TV Newser: With Iowa Caucus Early Media Numbers

January 4, 2012 By Tammy Haddad

TV Newser’s Chrie Ariens has the fast nationals for Tuesday’s Iowa Caucus coverage.

“During the long night that was the 2012 Iowa Caucus, Fox News came out on top in the ratings. For the first contest of the 2012 GOP presidential nomination process, FNC averaged 2.6 million Total Viewers in primetime. That’s about what the network does on an average night, but it doubled CNN’s take of 1.3 million (which is about double what CNN does on an average night). FNC also lead in A25-54 viewers averaging 683,988. Among the three cable news channels, Fox News was also the only one to see Total Viewer and A25-54 increases from the 2008 Iowa Caucus, when Democrats and Republicans both had candidates vying for their party’s nomination.”

  • Primetime (8-11pmET)

FNC: 2,630,909 / 683,988 A25-54
CNN: 1,310,366 / 486,184 A25-54
MSNBC: 1,195,230 / 302,631 A25-54

  • Full night (7pmET to-3amET)

FNC: 2,144,817 / 636,868
CNN: 999,518 / 390,118
MSNBC: 932,412 / 258,602

  • Ratings Peaks

FNC: 10:00-10:15pm with 3.1M / 880,000 A25-54
CNN: 10:15-10:30pm with 1.5M / 664,0000 A25-54
MSNBC: 10:00-10:15pm with 1.3M; 12:00-12:15a with 385,000 A25-54

  • Comparisons to Iowa 2008 (7pm-3amET):

FNC: +30% in Total Viewers / +7% A25-54
CNN: -36% in Total Viewers / -38% A25-54
MSNBC: +1% in Total Viewers / -36% A25-54

(Source: Nielsen Fast Nationals)

CLICK on http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/fox-news-leads-in-coverage-from-iowa-peaks-with-3-1-million-at-10pm_b105138

Filed Under: 2012 Election, Correspondents, News

CABLERS CaucusTeams: Maddow + Burnett Get Promotion

December 28, 2011 By Tammy Haddad

Two women get rare promotions in the cable news world. Rachel Maddow is MSNBC’s sole anchor of their coverage and new CNN anchor Erin Burnett has earned a slot on the CNN’s election desk.  Keith Olbermann anchors CURRENT TV’s coverage.  Here is the New York Times’ Brian Stetler’s preview of your favorite channel’s coverage.

“America’s trifecta of cable news channels, Fox News, MSNBC and CNN, are just about ready to show off their election year staffs.

Each channel plans to cover the one-night Iowa caucus for a stretch of several days, maximizing both their investments in the state and the ratings potential of a Republican presidential campaign.

On caucus night, Jan. 3, each channel will replace its usual prime time schedule with special reports. The extensive coverage plans highlight the importance of politics to the bottom lines of the cable news channels.

Past ratings indicate that the more seriously the channels treat events like the Iowa caucus, the more viewers tune in. So the networks are starting early.

Candy Crowley, the chief political correspondent for CNN, will report from Iowa starting Wednesday. Chris Matthews will anchor his MSNBC show, “Hardball,” from there starting Thursday, and the MSNBC anchors Chuck Todd and Andrea Mitchell will be there starting Friday.

But the coverage will be most visible starting Sunday, when the weekly public affairs programs like “Fox News Sunday,” anchored by Chris Wallace, and “State of the Union,” anchored by Ms. Crowley, will emanate from the state. On Sunday at 8 p.m. Eastern, both Fox and CNN will have caucus previews.

On Monday, the day before the caucus, more cable anchors will plant themselves in Iowa, including the Fox News anchor Shepard Smith and the cast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” Sean Hannity also will have his radio show and prime time Fox show there.

A new generation of anchors have stepped up since the last presidential election, so the coverage this year will look quite different than it did on Iowa caucus night in 2008. Back then, Brit Hume and Mr. Wallace led Fox’s coverage; this time, the co-anchors will be Bret Baier and Megyn Kelly.

They will both be in Iowa beginning Sunday. On Tuesday, they will be on from 8 to 11 p.m.; Mr. Hannity will then be on until midnight.

Similarly, in 2008, Keith Olbermann and Mr. Matthews led MSNBC’s coverage; this time, Rachel Maddow will be the main anchor, joined by Mr. Matthews and the channel’s other three prime time hosts, Ed Schultz, Lawrence O’Donnell and the Rev. Al Sharpton.

They will be on from 6 p.m. until midnight; then Chris Hayes, a weekend host, will be on until 1 a.m.

Current TV, the upstart competitor to MSNBC, has scheduled four hours of special caucus coverage on Tuesday starting at 7 p.m.

CNN’s top two anchors back in 2008, Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper, will be on again this year, but joined this time by Erin Burnett, who joined the network earlier this year from CNBC. They will also be joined by Ms. Crowley and John King, who will be stationed at his “Magic Wall.”

They will be on from 7 p.m. to midnight, when Piers Morgan will take over for an hour.

CNN, which generally is lower rated than Fox or MSNBC, but benefits from big periods of breaking news, seems to be positioning itself as a nonpartisan option for viewers who perceive Fox to favor Republicans and MSNBC to favor Democrats.

In a news release on Wednesday, CNN’s Washington bureau chief, Sam Feist, said, “As the only cable news channel that has not chosen a side in this election, CNN will tap into the expertise of our anchors, reporters and analysts to equip viewers with information to decide for themselves about the candidates.”

The main anchors for the network news divisions also will be in Iowa for the caucus. Additionally, CBS says that Bob Schieffer, the Sunday morning “Face the Nation” host, will be an anchor on “The Early Show” on the morning of the caucus. “The Early Show” is being replaced a few days later by a new morning program called “CBS This Morning.”

CNN, meanwhile, is using the caucus to introduce its new morning team. On Tuesday, Ashleigh Banfield and Zoraida Sambolin will start their new 5 to 7 a.m. shift, and Soledad O’Brien will start her new 7 to 9 a.m. shift.”

Filed Under: 2012 Election, Media Strategy, News, News Media, The White House

Dems Take on Romney Directly

December 27, 2011 By WHC Insider

The Obama fundraising machine is aiming directly for Mitt Romney as Iowans are about to hit the Caucus pavement to decalre their presidentialpreference.

Here is the letter that went out to the democrats list today.

Democrats
Friend —

You may have heard that Mitt Romney’s offering a supporter a chance to donate and win to spend election night with him in New Hampshire. Kind of like Dinner with Barack.

But there’s a catch: Deep pockets could go a long way to you joining him.

You see, for every dollar you donate to Mitt, you automatically get another entry to win. So someone who makes a $1,000 donation would be exactly 200 times more likely to win Mitt’s contest than someone who only chipped in $5.

We do things differently. Every few months, the President has asked to get together with just a few grassroots supporters to talk about what’s on their mind. And we don’t think your chances of winning should be determined by a big contribution.

So donate $3 or whatever you can to be automatically entered to win dinner with the President and First Lady.

You’ll have the same chances as everyone else, no matter how you enter.

This is precisely the difference between us and the other side. Instead of auctioning the President’s time off to the highest bidder, we believe anyone should have a shot at a seat at his table.

And instead of relying on big spenders, corporate lobbyists, and Super PACs to do our work, we rely on grassroots supporters like you.

The President wouldn’t have it any other way.

Chip in $3 or what you can to be automatically entered for dinner today:

http://my.democrats.org/Dinner-Our-Way

And remember, when Mitt’s spending election night with other folks who can afford $10,000 bets, we’ll be doing things our way.

Thanks,

Hildy

Hildy Kuryk
Finance Director
Democratic National Committee

Filed Under: 2012 Election, DC, Media Strategy, News, News Media, The White House Tagged With: Democrats

Iowa's Most Wanted

December 27, 2011 By WHC Insider

If you want to understand the electoral process about to take place in Iowa read Real Clear Politics’ Scott Conroy’s Iowa primer.  “A week from today, somewhere between 80,000 to 150,000 Iowans are expected to head to their local precincts to participate in the caucus system that has governed the state’s politics since the mid-1800s.

Even if turnout far exceeds projections, only a small percentage of Iowa’s 3 million residents will participate in the event that plays an outsized role in determining which Republican candidate will face off against President Obama in November — and possibly lead more than 300 million Americans over the next four years.

Despite the national media saturation, the process by which the Iowa caucuses are run can seem incomprehensible even to politically attuned outsiders, and it is rarely explained in detail.

But some quintessential Iowa quirks notwithstanding, the Republican caucuses are rather straightforward.

Iowans who wish to participate on Jan. 3 must first find the voting site of their local precinct. The venues tend to change every four years, so even longtime caucus-goers are advised to double-check with one of the campaigns, the Iowa Republican Party website, or their local newspaper.

There are 1,774 precincts in this year’s caucuses, and many of the state’s rural outposts will see just a trickle of participants. On the other hand, some of the more populous counties combine their precincts into one location, which means that thousands of caucus-goers will gather at a single location.

Blackhawk County, for instance, is holding this year’s caucuses at the UNI-Dome, where the University of Northern Iowa football team plays its home games.

The gatherings are run entirely by the state Republican Party, which will deliver to each precinct a list of registered Republicans as of Nov. 14.

Once people start arriving at their caucus sites, they will be checked in and directed to their seats if they are already registered with the party. Non-Republican voters are allowed to register on site with the GOP upon providing a driver’s license or other photo ID with proof of residency and will be added instantly to the party’s registration rolls and can participate that night.

Seventeen-year-olds who will turn 18 by Nov. 6, 2012 are allowed to take part.

Refreshments are typically provided, and neighbors and friends will mingle before the session is called to order by a volunteer precinct captain.

The caucuses begin at 7 p.m. Central Time, but Iowa GOP officials and the campaigns themselves encourage voters to show up early, since the process typically starts on time. Michele Bachmann’s website, for instance, directs supporters to be at their caucus precincts by 6:30 p.m. and does not mention that the event actually begins a half-hour later.

After a few minutes of procedural business, the captains will move on to the main event: the Presidential Preference Poll.

Each campaign will then be allowed to have one surrogate speak on its behalf. These speeches, which typically last two to three minutes, are among the most important elements of the entire process and figure to be even more critical this year, given the especially high percentage of undecided voters.

“I hope to make a decision before I go in there, but a lot of people will actually go in there, visit with their neighbors not knowing what they’re going to do, and say, ‘Who do you support?’ ” said longtime Iowa Republican activist Becky Beach. “And what happens a lot is people who they are friends with or that they respect, they’ll vote with those people because they know them and like them.”

In the past, well-organized campaigns have placed volunteer speech-givers at almost all of Iowa’s precincts, providing them with talking points for closing the deal.

But in a year that has seen a much lower level of organizing than usual, not a single campaign has announced chairpersons in all 99 counties. Bachmann seems to have come the closest, as her campaign announced earlier this month that she has 91 counties covered.

Mitt Romney’s campaign will not say how many county chairpersons it has in place, though the remnants of the extensive organizing Romney did in the state throughout 2007 may prove invaluable.

At his Ida County precinct in 1996, Iowa GOP campaign veteran Tim Albrecht delivered his first caucus night speech on behalf of Pat Buchanan — while just a high school senior. According to Albrecht, the visual stimuli at each site can have a significant last-minute impact.

“You want to plaster that room with your signs and plaster anyone who will wear one with a sticker, because people like to go with a winner when they are undecided this late,” he said.

The candidates themselves will usually speak on their own behalf at one or two precincts in the more heavily populated counties.

Once the speeches have concluded, voting begins promptly.

Though methods may vary from precinct to precinct, each caucus-goer is typically handed a blank piece of paper on which to write the surname of the candidate for whom they are voting.

“In our precinct, I know this sounds cliché, but we passed around a red-white-and-blue sequined shoebox with a hole slit in the top, and you drop your ballot in there,” said Iowa Republican Party Chairman Matt Strawn, who plans to attend his local caucus this year but will not vote out of deference to his position.

In contrast to the far more complicated procedures involved in the Democratic process, Iowa Republicans do not maintain a viability threshold, and there is no second-choice realignment vote for candidates with little support.

Votes will be tallied in full view of attendees at a table in the back of the room, where each campaign is allowed to station an observer.

Decisions about misspellings are made by precinct leaders, but a liberal interpretation of voter intent is typically employed. There have been surprisingly few disputes over the years.

The results for each precinct are announced to everyone who is still on hand, and precinct chairs then forward their counts to the Iowa Republican Party.

The state GOP is likely to launch a website in the coming days, which it will use to announce the results as they come in on caucus night.

In 2008, the Iowa GOP tabulated and announced the outcome soon after the caucuses closed, and the party has enacted further improvements that it hopes will help it determine the outcome even more efficiently.

Unless the tally is extraordinarily close, the winner should have enough time to make a victory speech while most TV viewers on the East Coast are still awake.

The candidates who decide to continue their campaigns will then hop on red-eye flights to New Hampshire, where a one-week sprint in the first-in-the-nation primary state begins promptly the next morning.” Thank you Scott!

Filed Under: 2012 Election, Media Strategy, News, News Media Tagged With: cable news, Dana Perino, Fox News, Media, News

Watch the Bloomberg/Washington Post/Dartmouth College Republican Presidential Debate

October 11, 2011 By WHC Insider

Dartmouth College will host, along with Bloomberg and the Washington Post, the Republican presidential candidates tonight to debate the U.S. Economy in what is being tagged as #econdebate.   This is yet another stop on the road to the 2012 election for the candidates who have been debating for the last few months hoping to take a lead in the polls.

“We are pleased to host Republican presidential candidates at Dartmouth,” said President Jim Yong Kim. “The debate on the U.S. economy will take on critical issues of national importance and help us all make informed decisions on Election Day.”

You can watch the debate which begins at 8:00 PM ET  online or on a Bloomberg Television station in your area.

via Politisite.com

Filed Under: 2012 Election Tagged With: 2012 Election, Bloomberg, Dartmouth, Washington Post

LaBolt: Obama 2012 National Press Secretary

April 5, 2011 By WHC Insider

Sam Stein reports in HuffPost that former White House Communications aide and Chicago native Ben LaBolt has been named as the national press secretary for the President’s re-election campaign.

Also joining the Obama 2012 staff as deputy press secretary is Katie Hogan, another White House veteran.

For those starting to keep track: 581 days until November 6, 2012.

Filed Under: 2012 Election, News Tagged With: Ben LaBolt, Katie Hogan, Obama 2012

Reagan Centennial GOP 2012 Debate Moves to September

March 30, 2011 By WHC Insider

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, in conjunction with its debate partners NBC News and POLITICO, are moving the Reagan Centennial GOP Presidential Primary Candidates Debate from May 2 to September 14, 2011.

Why the change? Seems not enough contenders are willing to toss their hat into the ring this early. Moving the debate to the fall will allow “enough time for the full slate of candidates to participate,” said John Heubusch, executive director for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.

“The Reagan Foundation prides itself on sponsoring world-class debates in which all of the major candidates in contention can make their point of view known to the widest possible audience,’ said Heubusch. ‘Although there will be a long and impressive list of Republican candidates who eventually take the field, too few have made the commitment thus far for a debate to be worthwhile in early May.“

For more about the move check out POLITICO and read the full release here: http://politi.co/i2Y5U4

Filed Under: 2012 Election, News Tagged With: 2012, Debate, GOP, John Heubusch, NBC News, Politico, Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation

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About White House Correspondents Insider

Exploring “behind the scenes” of the most powerful reporters and editors in the world, the Washington press corps. We track the White House Correspondents’ weekend and all the activities around it from journalists and media companies to the White House and politicos. Tammy Haddad is Co-Founder and Editor-In-Chief of WHC Insider and she hosts the Washington Insider podcast.

White House Correspondents Insider is not affiliated with or approved by the White House Correspondents Association which is a registered trademark of the WHCA.

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