Post your nominations for this week’s What’s Hot/What’s Not. I’ll post the finalists Sunday night…
Archive for April 9, 2011
Nooooooooooo…it’s Too Early!
Posted in Miscellaneous Subjects on April 9, 2011 by icn2I don’t know what’s worse; the cable nets revving up their campaign 2012 engines or Paul J. Gough writing about said engine revving in Variety…(reg. req.)
With 18 months before Election Night and no declared candidates other than President Obama, no dates for Iowa and New Hampshire voting, and only the barest announced plans for the conventions, you’d think that Campaign 2012 might be, for now, a journalistic nonstarter.
But that hasn’t kept the presidential campaign from making headlines nor the networks from laying the groundwork for a campaign season in which new media figures to play an ever greater role. The first GOP debate, sponsored by Fox News, is scheduled for next month. (NBC and Politico postponed until September what previously would have been the first debate, May 2 in Simi Valley, Calif., at the Reagan library, due to a lack of declared candidates.) And last week, CNN scheduled another GOP debate for Oct. 18 in Las Vegas, one of three they’ve planned so far this year.
Each network has been following prospective GOP candidates in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
“As far as I’m concerned, the campaign is under way,” CNN political director Sam Feist says.
Behind the scenes, each net has been meeting about political coverage, making plans on who and what to cover through the GOP primaries and beginning to hire off-air reporters whose work will supplement the on-air correspondents in key states. With the recent Chicago mayoral election, CNN called into action the “decision desk” that will work during the primaries and Election Night.
