Last Debate Is Not a Winner, In the Ratings

By Lisa de Moraes
Friday, October 17, 2008

Nearly 60 million viewers watched the third and final -- and most contentious -- debate between presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain.

Which, yes, means the faceoff you most wanted to see this election year was the one between vice presidential candidates Joseph Biden and Sarah Palin. It clocked more than 73 million viewers, and was the second-most-watched debate in U.S. history, presidential or vice presidential.

Wednesday's final debate, from Hofstra University, did not amass the 66 million viewers who watched the second debate. But that town-hall-style event was held just a week after the highly anticipated and much-watched veep faceoff and in the early electrifying days of the Wall Street meltdown.

The least-watched Republican vs. Democrat debate of this election was the first, which logged 55 million viewers.

Wednesday's debate, in which the two candidates for the first time sat spitting distance from each other, might have drawn a bigger crowd had it not run up against Fox's broadcast of a championship-deciding Game 5 between Los Angeles and Philadelphia -- those teams' cities being the country's second- and fourth-largest TV markets.

Though CBS News's Bob Schieffer moderated, CBS's coverage attracted the fewest viewers among the major broadcasters, 9.2 million. ABC logged 10.6 million; NBC led with 11.3 million.

Fox News Channel enjoyed its biggest debate crowd of this cycle, 9.1 million viewers. Another 8.9 million went with CNN and 3.7 million chose MSNBC.

The overall tally also includes Univision, CNBC, BBC America, MUN2, Telemundo and PBS. PBS estimates are not included in Nielsen's stats, but the public television network provides its own audience estimate.

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Major League Baseball has agreed to postpone the first pitch of Game 6 of the World Series (should the game be needed) by about 15 minutes to enable Fox to join CBS and NBC in running Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama 's 30-minute message to voters Oct. 29.

That leaves only ABC among the major broadcast networks still undecided as to whether it will let Obama's campaign buy the 8 p.m. half-hour slot on its prime-time schedule.

"Fox will accommodate Senator Obama's desire to communicate with voters in this long-form format," the network said in a statement. "If requested, the network would be willing to make similar time available to Senator McCain's campaign."

Fox is contractually obligated to carry the game if this year's World Series comes to that.

Obama's campaign is ponying up just shy of $1 million each to NBC and CBS for the half-hour buy. The camp likely would pay a similar amount to Fox. That's considerably less than NBC and CBS would otherwise get for the 10 or 11 ad "units" they run during that half-hour. But Obama is not getting a price break; the campaign will be charged what's called the "lowest unit cost" in compliance with federal law.

ABC and Obama's camp are still in talks about whether the network will make available the time slot, which would enable the candidate to create a so-called "roadblock" on the broadcast networks.

With those networks these days accounting for only about half the audience watching TV at any given time, it's a less dramatic programming stunt than it would have been a decade or so ago, but pretty dramatic nonetheless.

ABC has scheduled an episode of its struggling dramedy series "Pushing Daisies" at 8 that night. The show is one of last year's freshman series hurt by the writers' strike; ABC is trying to relaunch it this fall, but so far without much luck. ABC execs may believe there is opportunity for "Daisies" to get more sampling if the network does not join in the Obama buy, particularly now that Game 6 would not start until 8:35 p.m. -- more than halfway through the "Daisies" broadcast.

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John McCain, so pugnacious in his encounters with his Democratic rival, folded like a tent when confronted last night by late-night host David Letterman, whom McCain stood up last month.

"I screwed up," McCain said of his last-minute decision to cancel his appearance on CBS's "Late Show" last month, forcing Letterman to scramble to find a replacement guest.

Letterman, who's been laying into McCain every night since then, started in immediately last night when the candidate walked onstage at the Ed Sullivan Theater.

"Can you stay?" he asked, dripping cynicism.

"Depends on how bad it gets," McCain answered.

The candidate admitted he "screwed up" but bravely tried to suggest he'd done Letterman a favor by backing out of his previous date.

"Look at all the conversations I gave you . . . including having Mr. Olbermann on."

(MSNBC on-air talent Keith Olbermann, who had filled in after McCain told Letterman he had to rush back to Washington to save the melting-down economy, though he in fact went to be interviewed by Katie Couric, was shown standing in readiness backstage at yesterday's taping should McCain bail a second time.)

"I haven't had so much fun since my last interrogation," said McCain, a Vietnam War POW.

With regard to the current economic situation, which McCain stood up Letterman to return to Washington to fix, the candidate said Americans are "the victims of a drive-by shooting by Washington and Wall Street."

Really?

"Now's not the time to raise anybody's taxes -- except yours, and I guarantee when I'm president I'll do it," McCain told Letterman.

After that, the interview got a lot more heated:

Letterman pressed McCain for details about his debate remark that he knows how to get Osama bin Laden.

"In 19 days. I'll be elected . . . look --" McCain tried to joke.

"Bin Laden. Let's just start there," Letterman persisted.

"First of all, obviously, you don't want to say exactly, but the point --"

"But you have a plan," Letterman said.

"I know what we need to do, okay?" McCain responded. ". . . I think I know, because of my many years being involved in these issues, how to develop a plan. One of the areas, of course, is human intelligence, which we're very badly lacking. And I am confident that we can get him."

McCain also said Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was "absolutely" his "first choice" for vice president, while adding, "I didn't know her well at all -- I knew her by reputation."

But is Palin "the woman to lead us through the next 9/11 attack," Letterman wondered.

"Absolutely," McCain said. "She has inspired Americans. That's the thing we need."

After discussing Barack Obama's relationship with former Weather Underground member William Ayers, Letterman brought up McCain's relationship with G. Gordon Liddy, convicted in the Watergate scandal.

"I met him, you know, I mean," McCain said.

"Didn't you attend a fundraiser at his house?"

"Gordon Liddy's?" McCain asked.

They cut to commercial.

Coming back, McCain said, "I know Gordon Liddy. He paid his debt, he went to prison, he paid his debt. . . . I'm not in any way embarrassed to know Gordon Liddy."