TPT DEBATE TIPS

contributed by Brendan Henehan, Twin Cities Public Television

Informality Is King
Keep the podiums in storage, and toss out the stopwatches. Ditto with opening and closing statements. And if you can live without a panel of respected journalists, then by all means do so. Leave traditional debates to the League of Women Voters. Don’t be afraid of being distinctive. And try to do as many things as possible to signal to candidates that the goal is not to give a canned speech, but rather the goal is conversation. Think about using a couch. Seat questioners and participants together. Try to think of using a graphics package that doesn’t involve red, white and blue and an open that shuns fanfare brass music.

Keep Candidates on their Toes
Break up the discussion with things candidates aren’t expecting. Short clips of tape and lightning rounds are two favorite examples of mine. My experience is that candidates often fall into predictable rhythms and cadences. It’s important to break those up so that the pacing of the debate varies. I think “lightning rounds” are a great way to do this. Short, quick, single-word answers can be fun or serious and are very valuable in terms of pinning candidates down or making them think about questions they have not prepared for. In a 2002 Minnesota Gubernatorial debate we asked candidates — among other things — to tell us what they want to see in their refrigerators when hungry at 2 in the morning… and what famous movie roles they would have liked to have played. Each question provided memorable answers that gave insight.

Shoot for the Moon When There is No Incumbent
This is a very important, underappreciated concept. When there is no incumbent in a race, there is much greater latitude with the number of debates and the formats that candidates are willing. These incumbent-less debates are wonderful times to pull out all the stops. Some of the most innovative concepts we’ve incorporated into debates –including an actual quiz show debate with lights and buzzers and scoring—have come when there is no incumbent in the race to say no.

Try Your Darnedest to Incorporate Debates into Existing Programs
There are great advantages by doing this. Existing programs tend to have timeslots and formats and sets and hosts, thereby removing these items from the list of negotiations with campaigns. An existing program and timeslot also allows debate producers wonderful leverage in one key way. Producers can rightly say that they are prepared to go ahead with a program whether or not all the candidates agree to show up. This is a key leverage point and having a regular timeslot guarantees that you can back up your threat. After all, you will have to have a show one way or the other.

Don’t be Shy About Getting Attention
This is a point of particular concern for PBS outlets, which are miserable at generating publicity. Invite the media early and often to come cover your event. Allow TV cameras and still photographers into your studio even though they get in the way and tend to make clicking sounds. Also make sure reporters know it’s okay to come into your control room to shoot some B-roll. This invites TV stations to do longer, more visually-rich packages and guarantees that your station will have more prominent face time. We learned early on at Twin Cities Public Television that if you intersperse the hosts of the program with the candidates on the set that it is virtually impossible for print and TV to shoot the event and not include your host in the photo. This also guarantees that the media outlet has to identify the station and host. Jim Lehrer has hosted many presidential debates but none of us have ever seen him in a photo with the candidates. If he were seated between them it would have been a different matter.