| | | | Last night's debate is on track to become the most-watched debate in American history. Exact #'s will come in around lunchtime, and we'll have constant updates at CNNMoney.com. I'll be live with Carol Costello at the end of the 9am hour on CNN TV.
Based on my reading of Nielsen's very early "overnight" #'s, the cable newsers saw big increases over the 2008 and 2012 debates.
Per Variety, "NBC appears to have drawn the biggest audience among the broadcast networks with a 11.0 household rating and 15 share from 9-10:39 p.m. ET." All of these #'s are subject to revision and adjustment later in the day, so stay tuned...
-- Flashback: Here was my story all about the ratings expectations... | | | Here's our full recap of the last 12 hours: | | | Right wing media vs Lester Holt | | Lester Holt is feeling good this morning, and so are NBC News execs. Holt will be back on "NBC Nightly News" at 6:30 tonight.
But conservative media outlets are challenging Holt's moderating, saying he tilted the stage in Clinton's favor. "Holt clearly heard the cries of his colleagues in the liberal media to be tough on Trump and ease up on Hillary loud and clear," MRC president Brent Bozell said in a statement.
All night and into the morning, Drudge linked to Heat Street's headline calling Holt "the third debater" and the Washington Times' story calling his fact-checking "opinion journalism."
Dylan Byers points out what those stories ignored: Yes, "Holt interrupted Trump more often than Clinton and fact-checked Trump more often than Clinton," but "Trump went over his allotted time more often and said more statements that were factually inaccurate."
This morning, Fox News viewers are not hearing about Trump's whoppers. "Fox & Friends" is in full media-blame-game mode -- it is really something to behold. The banner on screen: "DOUBLE STANDARD FOR DEM?" One of the main complaints is that Holt didn't ask about Benghazi, the Clinton Foundation or Clinton's email practices. To which I would say, true, and Trump himself could have brought these subject up. There are lots of other subjects Holt also didn't ask about... | | | How Trump's opinion of Holt shifted | | "I thought Lester did a great job. Honestly, I thought Lester did a great job," Trump told Dylan Byers shortly after the debate was over. When asked if the questions had been fair, Trump replied: "Yeah, I thought it was very fair." Kellyanne Conway told Jim Acosta pretty much the same thing.
This morning, however, Trump changed his tone. Holt did "okay," he said on Fox. Holt did "fine." He said Holt lobbed "very unfair" questions at the end of the debate, but doesn't want to complain about it... | | | Elsewhere: Lots of praise for Holt | | | Let's try to cut through the partisanship. As Dylan noted in his story overnight, for much of the debate, Holt held back, allowing the two candidates to actually debate -- a move that was in line with the expectations of the Commission on Presidential Debates. "Points to Lester Holt for standing aside and letting Trump and Clinton go at it," Adam Nagourney tweeted. Others questioned his absence: "Apparently Lester Holt went to the bathroom, way down the hall, and only one urinal is available and there is a line," Jim Geraghty wrote. Overall, I saw mostly positive sentiments about Holt on social media... | | | Trump's alternate reality | | | At times, Trump seemed to be speaking from an alternate reality. This is the effect of the Sean Hannity bubble specifically and the conservative media bubble more generally. Trump's message about his position on the Iraq war invasion was to say, repeatedly, "Call Sean Hannity." | | | -- An emailer notes: "What Trump does not understand is that most of America and -- certainly the news media -- does not see Hannity as credible. It's an example of living inside the bubble..." | | | What was the effect of the "split screen?" | | | CNNMoney producer Laurie Frankel emails: Michael Smerconish just said on "New Day" that Clinton's biggest asset was the "split screen"-- she looked presidential, he looked irritated. I did think it was interesting that CNN's broadcast was split screen the entire time -- the control room never went to Holt or the wide shots. C-SPAN did the same thing... | | | We're all talking about Trump, not Clinton | | | Monday night's match-up was the "most tweeted debate ever." And Trump was a livelier subject than Clinton. Twitter said the "final share of conversation around the candidates on stage" was 62% for Trump and 38% for Clinton. On Facebook, the results were even more lopsided, with Trump earning 79% share of conversation and Clinton having the remaining 21%. But being talked about isn't necessarily a good thing for a candidate, especially in THIS election year. Here's my full story... | | | Trump misleading people about the "polls" | | Alex Koppelman emails: Anyone who knows polling knows not to trust those online, un-scientific polls some websites conduct after an event like a debate — any resemblance they bear to the actual national mood is purely coincidental.
Trump may trust those polls, he may not, but he certainly loves citing them, and he and his supporters are doing that again today. Early this morning, his Twitter account touted the Drudge Report's own poll, which showed 80% of Drudge readers thinking Trump won, to 20% giving it to Clinton. (Drudge itself pointed to a Gateway Pundit item that hyped a purported ABC News poll showing Clinton in fourth place in the race overall — which poses a critical thinking problem even before you notice that it's in fact a poll from a fake website.)
On "Fox & Friends," the co-hosts parroted Trump's view: "He's ahead in most of the polls." In fact, CNN's scientific poll of debate watchers found that "Clinton was deemed the winner of Monday night's debate by 62% of voters who tuned in to watch, while just 27% said they thought Trump had the better night..." | | | In the first 15 minutes... | | Conventional wisdom says the first 15 minutes of the debate are more important than the rest. Was that true again last night? If so, it's a good thing for Trump, who started relatively strong on issues of trade and the economy. As NBC's Katy Tur noted afterward, "Trump did have a moment tonight, and that was on trade. It's an issue that resonates with his base and it's one that stands to play well with moderates."
-- Stay tuned: I'm eager to see the quarter-hour ratings to see if there was any drop-off in viewership as the debate went on. I doubt it... | | | Instant reactions from journos | | By about the 30-minute mark, you could see Media Twitter starting to congeal around the view that Clinton was outperforming Trump. She was better prepared... He was taking her bait... And he was rehashing old campaign lines and conflicts. This view mirrored CNN's poll of debate watchers afterward.
Ben Smith, who published his infamous "How Mitt Romney Won the First Debate" post just 40 minutes into the first Obama/Romney face-off in 2012, filed this at 9:44: "How Hillary Clinton Took Charge In The First Presidential Debate." If anything, it became more true as the second half of the debate progressed... | | | Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon just tweeted this: "15 mins in last night, Trump lost his cool. By 30 mins in, he had lost the debate. By the end - w/ Iraq answer - he lost any grip on reality" | | | This illustrates the difference between the two candidates | | | This is small, but still significant. Clinton promoted her new campaign book by name and specifically read her web site URL aloud. The site stayed up and running all night long. Trump limply replied that viewers should go to his web site too, without specifying the URL. Still, his site briefly crashed from all the traffic... | | | Is there any chance Trump will back out of debate #2? | | Romney 2012 strategist/Trump 2016 critic Stuart Stevens tweeted last night: "Would not be surprised if Trump backs out of next debate, complaining about rules, moderator, etc."
This morning, others are wondering the same thing. Pay attention to what Rudy Giuliani said in the spin room afterward: "If I were Donald Trump, I wouldn't participate in another debate unless I was promised the journalist would act like a journalist, and not an ignorant fact check." As Mark Preston notes in an email, this isn't any ordinary Trump surrogate talking, this is Giuliani, who has Trump's ear... | | | The audience at Hofstra U was repeatedly admonished to remain silent, but did not. There were chuckles and there were cheers... Leading me to wonder... What more can the commission do to tamp down the audience during the next two debates? | | "For those who concluded that hosting 'The Apprentice' would ready Trump for this sort of exercise, well, it turns out those are very different muscles than the ones he had to put to use on Monday night," Brian Lowry wrote overnight.
His overarching point: "As TV insiders know, reality TV really isn't unscripted, and those programs benefit from the input of producers and editors in shaping storylines and the way characters are presented. In this first debate, anyway, Clinton stuck to her script, and Trump generally looked like he could have used a more detailed one." | | | More from Lowry's review: "Holt acquitted himself well enough, occasionally fact-checking Trump's statements -- usually when he sought to deny direct quotes that had been attributed to him -- and pressing him for specific answers... His performance offered a measure of redemption for NBC News." | | | Colbert was live after the debate... | | | Chloe Melas notes that Stephen Colbert was live last night with "De Late Show's De Live Debate Coverage." Colbert joked about Trump's sniffing: "Sounded like he was fighting off a cold, with cocaine..." | | | Will Megyn Kelly snare Clinton interview? | | How Megyn Kelly ended her post-debate interview with Brian Fallon:
KELLY: Clinton went on record and called yours truly a "superb journalist" when Trump was attacking me. Why won't she come on "The Kelly File?"
FALLON: I agree 1,000% with her characterization of you as a superb journalist, and I think it's only a matter of time.
KELLY: Before the election?
FALLON: I'm gonna go back right after I walk off this platform here, and make the case that we need to get her on the show. | | Tell us what you think... | | | What do you like about this newsletter? What do you dislike? Send your feedback to reliablesources@cnn.com. We appreciate every email. We'll be back tonight at our normal time... | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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