With Audiences Encouraged to React, Primary Debates Seem More Made for TV

By JEREMY W. PETERS
NYT

“Hello, Charleston!”

It was a few minutes before CNN’s debate in South Carolina last week, and a director for the network took the stage to make sure the audience was primed and limber.

Evidently dissatisfied with the lack of enthusiasm, he tried again. “You can do better than that!” he shouted. “Louder!”

“It was like whipping up a crowd before a high school basketball game,” recalled Bill Press, the liberal syndicated columnist and talk show host, who described CNN’s crowd warm-up in an interview. Minutes into that debate, Newt Gingrich would tear into the moderator, John King, for asking about the sordid allegations of an ex-wife, and would send the crowd to its feet.

“That’s the atmosphere that they wanted,” Mr. Press said. “And that’s the atmosphere that they got.”

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