Ready for the election

Tuesday’s election night coverage on TV will look different than it did four years ago, both visually and editorially.

The public has been heavily invested in this presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain, and cable-news ratings for political coverage – MSNBC, Fox News, CNN — have soared. Broadcast networks this time will be many viewers’ second choice.

Both cable and broadcast have “super-sized” their plans this year with bigger and flashier graphics and expanded coverage that will now include international reaction and voter fraud reporting.

You’ll have more viewing choices Tuesday than ever, so keep the remote handy.

There are at least three new cable-network alternatives this time: BBC America, CNBC and BET.

Since overseas interest in these elections has been so high, for the first time there’ll be a decided international flavor to election night: All the major networks plan on having their overseas bureaus sampling reaction to the Obama-McCain race.

The best example of this global outreach will be cable’s BBC America. For the first time, American viewers will have a truly international alternative to American TV coverage: The Beeb is flying in 125 staffers from England to augment its BBC-America team -- something that’s raised budgetary hackles in Parliament.

And for the first time, the two Anglo-American BBC networks will simulcast, so Yanks will see the same coverage here that’s being fed to Britain and 200 other countries. The BBC has also added longtime ABC-TV “Nightline” anchor Ted Koppel to Americanize its election-night team.

With the memory of 2000’s Florida hanging-chad fiasco still fresh in many minds, and voter fraud allegations (Acorn, Diebold, etc.) getting so much airplay, all the networks have dispatched reporters to key polling districts. ABC-TV, for example, will have a “Ballot Watch” unit, and CNN has at least a half-dozen reporting teams in states where irregularities could become a problem. HBO is helpfully rerunning “Recount,” its Kevin Spacey movie about the Florida debacle, Tuesday night.

But television is primarily a picture-driven medium — in entertainment OR news — and the HDTV-conscious networks are “going big” visually Tuesday night. While the broadcast nets, unlike cable news, aren’t adding much air time to their 2004 totals, their graphics and online coverage have been beefed up.

ABC’s Charles Gibson, for example, will anchor Tuesday from ABC’s Times Square “crossroads of the world”’ studio. The network has also bought up electronic screens across the street (Reuters, Nasdaq, Hard Rock Café) to display ABC’s vote results at passing tourists.

NBC is going even bigger graphically: It will use the facade of network headquarters 30 Rock as a giant big-screen TV, and will post electoral counts on the two candidates’ banners. And the famed Rockefeller Center skating rink will be converted to a gigantic national electoral map. (CBS will stay in its newsroom.) These are not-so-subtle attempts to one-up CNN chief national correspondent John King’s much-admired and widely copied “Magic Wall,” the large interactive touch-screen map King uses to instantly change states from red or blue. Most broadcast and cable networks now have their own electoral-vote-tracking “Magic Walls.” They’ve become so popular that “Saturday Night Live’ recently did a spoof of King’s wall, with some states falling onto the studio floor.

We’ve come a long way graphically from the late Tim Russert’s famous whiteboard on NBC’s pre-HDTV election night coverage in 2000.

If you prefer subdued substance over graphics, there’s always the staid “Newshour Election Night Coverage” on PBS beginning here at 6 p.m. Tuesday channels 9 and 22. PBS will radiate gravitas with two of the four presidential debate moderators, chief anchor Jim Lehrer and political analyst Gwen Ifill. PBS’ coverage is heavier on analysis than raw-vote totals, the latter a bedrock on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. Lehrer has panelists such as presidential scholar Michael Beschloss and political analysts Mark Shields and David Brooks. Unlike many pundits on cable news networks, these two don’t raise their voices.

NBC corporate sister network CNBC, taking advantage of its climbing ratings during the current economic crisis, is calling its new, financially oriented election-night coverage “Your Money, Your Vote.”

Given the anticipated high Nielsen ratings on Tuesday, one thing the networks won’t welcome — but have plans for is what’s being called “The ‘L’ word”: landslide.

With some polls indicating precisely that for Obama, the 4 p.m. poll closings (Pacific time) in key swing states of North Carolina and Virginia could set the night’s overall theme: If Obama wins one or both, it could be a long night for McCain.

If a landslide appears likely, networks have come up with Plan B’s, most similar to that of Fox News. Fox anchor Brit Hume, for example, said in a recent interview (Inside TV & Radio) that “we can’t just pack up and go home early if we call it. We start looking at Senate and House races. We’ll make that the storyline.” That would be a welcome development to those of us who have seen the Senate and House races downplayed in favor of presidential coverage in recent years.

For many younger voters, much of their election information this past year has come from Comedy Central’s “Daily Show With Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report.” Four years ago, Stewart’s election-night hour special featured only a few live cut-ins. But Tuesday, the entire “InDecision 2008” at 7 p.m., featuring both Stewart and Stephen Colbert, will be broadcast live. It’s sure to draw a big audience. “You’ve put up with us for a year,” jokes Stewart in Comedy Central’s promos, “you can handle an hour of THIS.”

Bill Mann, a North Bay freelancer, writes a weekly TV column for A&E. Mann talks TV with Steve Jaxon Tuesdays at 4 p.m. on Santa Rosa’s KSRO (1350 AM). E-mail him at newsmann@mannpublications.org.