Iowa Tests Networks' Readiness
After a year of intensely covering the presidential campaign, TV news networks finally had actual votes to count Thursday - and at times their Iowa caucus coverage felt like boarding a jet airplane to travel down the street.
CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC mobilized their top talent and impressive electronics to cover the victories of Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee wall-to-wall. Broadcast networks filled in viewers with cut-ins sometimes so brief they'd be missed in a blink.
Yet the most valuable element of the coverage moved silently and continuously at the bottom of Fox's screen.
The crawl repeated past Iowa caucus results, reminding viewers that those votes sometimes bore little resemblance to how the presidential nominating process shook out that year - and blinking a caution signal to commentators who might make too much of the 2008 results.
Plenty tried.
MSNBC analyst Pat Buchanan: "Mike Huckabee has a ticket to the finals for the Republican nomination."
CNN's Anderson Cooper: "What does it say about Mitt Romney that the more money he spends and the more people get to know him, the less they like him?"
CNN's David Gergen: "John Edwards has nowhere to go now."
The firepower thrown at Iowa coverage may have added to the temptation to make sweeping statements. CNN's Jeffrey Toobin stood before a giant computer screen that allowed him to draw circles with his fingers and move elements to instantly change percentages listed for candidates, like a giant iPhone.
It led him to the conclusion that many Americans have their minds made up about Hillary Clinton based on six caucus attendees - six! - from Persia, Iowa who did not make her their second choice in the vote.
The networks did not, however, miss the historical significance of a man bidding to be the nation's first black president winning in an overwhelmingly white state, or the strength of the evangelical community in boosting Huckabee's candidacy.
"It can't be overstated that a guy who was basically unknown a few months ago came in and won this state in convincing fashion and obliterated Mitt Romney," said MSNBC's Howard Fineman.
Networks moved cautiously in using entrance poll information from a survey they conducted with The Associated Press. The first reports, shortly after 8 p.m. EST, noted that Huckabee and Romney were in a tight race, and that Obama and Clinton led the way with Democrats.
Later, information gleaned from the survey foreshadowed the results: a majority of GOP caucus-goers saying they were born again or evangelical Christians, a base of Huckabee's support, and the turnout of young people enthused by Obama's candidacy.
Each of the news networks placed cameras in locations where caucuses were taking place. Yet the risk of dead air - CNN cut to one location for about a minute before realizing participants were just waiting for more people to file in - led them to underuse the asset. It was a window into democracy, effectively into a voting booth, that is unique to Iowa.
The night wasn't without a few fun glitches expected of a first night out for political coverage.
Both MSNBC and CNN ran "countdown clocks" on their screens to the start of the caucuses, except MSNBC pegged that time to 7:30 p.m. and CNN settled on 8 p.m.
Fox's Shepard Smith ended an interview with an Obama staffer with a warm handshake, saying, "I hope it's a good night for you and for everyone else." He quickly realized that was an impossibility in a contest with winners and losers.
"Well, can't be," he said.
By DAVID BAUDER