UK Election Coverage

Excuse me?
I dunno what you're watching Wednesdays at midday during the sitting of the House, but PMQs is not a debate by any stretch of the imagination, it quite regularly turns into a slanging match, self-glorification and, as was recently proved, lying through your teeth.

I just can't see them pulling in good figures to be honest, politics and TV don't seem to go in this country. Although it might change I guess.

Seems the format being narrowed down to matches almost exactly what I said a few weeks ago in the Sky News Thread

Except they won't be transmitted simultaneously by the looks of things - each will broadcast theirs during prime time and make it available to all other broadcasters afterwards (at least that's what one report said). So we wait and see.

I finding it difficult to understand why Dobbin the Donkey agreed to this debate. It kind of reinforces the false notion that we vote for leaders and not MPs, and with him being the weakest leader he doesn't really stand a chance. It's very odd that he'd choose to set himself up in this way. Not that he isn't used to shooting himself in the foot, I suppose.

Who is that, Chie? (genuine question.)

You're correct to an extent. Unlike the US political system, we don't directly elect the Prime Minister. However, a televised debate between the major party leaders is still relevant to the UK. Each leader is in overall control of the policy direction of their party, and it is on the basis of each party's policy platform that we ought to select our MP. The leaders thrashing out the main issues of the day can only be good for British democracy. PMQs is a farce - all the questions are tabled in advance and no questions are asked of the Opposition leaders. This will present the three main parties on a level playing field and will give the British people the chance to make their own mind up about which party's policies are the most effective/desirable. I'd be very surprised if it turned into a personality contest - I'm sure the leaders want to steer clear of that as well!

I think the first one will probably act as a promo for the second and third one. Newspapers will also add their spin after the first debate which will mean the second and third debates will mainly consist of the leaders answering newspaper allegations rather than dealing with issues that 'real' people have raised.

Whatever happens, the Sky News one will obviously be the least viewed and at a guess I'd say the BBC one would be the most viewed, whatever order they happen to be in.

Which is why I support the simulcast of all three.

Simulcasting across news channels is ok but simulcasts across any of the main 5 channels is likely to cause complaints (Just like when the World Cup final is simulcast and people complain that there is 'nothing' else on), plus I doubt ITV would be in favour of a simulcast.

2 (or 4) debates shown as follows

1 - BBC ONE, BBC News Channel, Sky News and
2 - ITV1, BBC News Channel, Sky News

would be my suggestion.

On a similar note, I was recently channel hopping on Astra and in the run-up to the German elections, there was a TV debate there, too. It was being simulcast on at least Das Erste, ZDF and RTL and only their "extra" channels were showing other programming. In this day and age I don't think it can be successfully argued that people won't have choice on that particular evening. I would think the vast majority of UK households now have digital television in one form or another, so there should be plenty of choice for everyone if the main channels simulcast the debates.

Precisely, Force feeding the population on three evenings politics cannot be a bad thing.