{"id":8864,"date":"2011-04-17T09:55:29","date_gmt":"2011-04-17T13:55:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=8864"},"modified":"2011-04-17T09:55:29","modified_gmt":"2011-04-17T13:55:29","slug":"steve-paikin-on-moderating-the-leaders-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/04\/17\/steve-paikin-on-moderating-the-leaders-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve Paikin on moderating the leaders’ debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

I\u2019ve had the honour of moderating two previous federal leaders\u2019 debates, and both times, the four minutes of waiting for the top of the clock can be agonizing. It\u2019s not an exaggeration to say that in 2006 — the first time I ever participated in a leaders\u2019 debate at any level — I felt like vomiting during those four minutes. Yes, I was that petrified.<\/p>\n

So I cracked a joke.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what you guys are so nervous about,\u201d I said to them. \u201cYou\u2019ve all done this before. I never have.\u201d<\/p>\n

For all the criticism that he\u2019s wooden and humourless, it was actually then opposition leader Stephen Harper who had a funny comeback.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah,\u201d he said, \u201cbut you\u2019ve got someone talking in your ear to help you. We\u2019ve got nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So how about that whole “being invisible” part of the moderator’s role?<\/p>\n

\n

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?<\/p>\n

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\u2019t see the videos of the questions and couldn\u2019t 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\u2019t catching me trying to play technician. Ultimately, I gave up.<\/p>\n

Was the debate a good television experience? I don\u2019t know. I never saw it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,28,53],"tags":[188,101],"class_list":["post-8864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-media","category-politics","tag-electionwatch","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2iY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8864"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8865,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8864\/revisions\/8865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}