Everyone is watching the debate to hear what the leaders say. Nobody tunes in to watch the moderator, so the best moderator is the one who manages to keep the debate moving smoothly but remains mostly invisible to the viewers. Steve Paikin was the moderator for the leaders’ English language debate this time around. He has a post on his experiences:
I’ve had the honour of moderating two previous federal leaders’ debates, and both times, the four minutes of waiting for the top of the clock can be agonizing. It’s not an exaggeration to say that in 2006 — the first time I ever participated in a leaders’ debate at any level — I felt like vomiting during those four minutes. Yes, I was that petrified.
So I cracked a joke.
“I don’t know what you guys are so nervous about,” I said to them. “You’ve all done this before. I never have.”
For all the criticism that he’s wooden and humourless, it was actually then opposition leader Stephen Harper who had a funny comeback.
“Yeah,” he said, “but you’ve got someone talking in your ear to help you. We’ve got nothing.”
So how about that whole “being invisible” part of the moderator’s role?
For some reason, I always seem to mess something up. The first time in 2006, I had forgotten to turn off my BlackBerry. As I was reading the introduction, I felt it buzz. How embarrassing was it going to be to have my phone ring as I was 30 seconds into my script. Somehow, I reached down and silenced it as I was reading the intro. Then the TelePrompter broke, so I quickly had to find my place in the script and keep reading, trying to make it all look seamless. Was someone trying to give me a heart attack?
This year, I somehow managed to kick the wiring out of the monitor on my desk, again, while reading the intro, meaning I spent the entire two hours flying blind. I couldn’t see the videos of the questions and couldn’t see what shots were being used during the broadcast. I spent the first five minutes of the debate playing with the wires, trying to reattach them, hoping the camera wasn’t catching me trying to play technician. Ultimately, I gave up.
Was the debate a good television experience? I don’t know. I never saw it.
Here’s the riding of Whitby-Oshawa in the 2008 election. Notice all that deep blue colour? As the legend says, the opacity of colour indicates the strength of the party in that area. Up in the Brooklin area, you can barely see the underlying road pattern for all the blueness.
