WTNH’s Mark Davis, who alongside The Day’s Paul Choiniere posed questions to Murphy and McMahon during last night’s US Senate debate, has sent the following response to viewers who were upset/annoyed by sister-station WCTX switching to “Law and Order” during the closing moments of the live broadcast:
Thank you for your e-mail and let me assure you that I am just as upset about last night’s grievous error as you are.
As best I can determine; the producer of the debate miscalculated the timing, possibly due to the frequent audience outbursts. As I’m sure you know television stations, like everything else these days, are run by computers. Apparently the producer was unable to reach the proper technician in time so the debate could run over its scheduled time. When 8 PM came, the computer just proceeded to the next scheduled event cutting off Mrs. McMahon mid sentence.
To make up for this error, Mrs. McMahon’s entire closing statements were broadcast in their entirety on our 10PM newscast on MYTV9 (WCTX TV) and our 11PM newscast on News 8 (WTNH TV). The entire debate is also still available on our website www.wtnh.com
Even though I was not responsible for producing the debate, may I extend my apologies to you both.
Sincerely,
Mark Davis
Chief Capitol & Political Correspondent
News 8
WTNH TV (ABC)
WCTX TV (MYTV9)
I feel bad for Mark Davis. He shouldn’t have to apologize for the lack of foresight by station management or the fact that their master control is in a totally different state. To blame it on computers? They’re only as good as the people programming and using them! None the less, Mark Davis is one of the best political reporters in the market. I wish he’d go to NBC30 or FOX61.
And why do they insist on branding WCTX-59 (once WB-59, UPN-59, and “the X”) as MyTV9? Our local channel 9 (since the days of the roof-top antenna) has always been and will always be WWOR channel 9. That’s the real My9. Again, WTNH goes the cheap route, capitalizing off the heritage and recognition of an already existing station watched by viewers in southern and western Connecticut for over 50 years. The best WTNH could do is sell off the channel 59 spectrum and put the station out of it’s misery. It’s all garbage programming with recycled news from WTNH … and “debates” with no closing statement.
“the producer of the debate miscalculated the timing, possibly due to the frequent audience outbursts.” – Mark Davis
Maybe debates should be that, debates. When the audience becomes the story, not the content of the debate, the audience robs all of us.
Let the politicians debate. Let the politicians debate and let the citizen benefit from a grown up exchange of ideas. Live audiences serve no purpose except to create shouting matches and distractions on cue.
If childish mockery of opposing ideas is what the public wants they can get plenty of that on FOXNews.
The airwaves used to be public property held and used for the benefit of our Democracy. Today, they are the property of Corporations. Our Democracy be damned and that’s what McMahon can deliver just as her supporters proved in this flawed exchange and execution of a debate-like fiction.
I don’t agree with the above comment at all. Why would you feel sorry for Mark Davis? He just threw a co-worker under the bus publicly to save himself!!!! What kind of person would do that? His explanation is more or less accurate, and it could have and should have been avoided. Automation or not, a station can easily lock out a computer trigger to start the next event, which should have been done. The fact that it didn’t happen could be placed on many shoulders (producer, director, News Director). Did Mark Davis consider that his always long-winded questions may be why they ran long? If he was more interested in the candidate’s answers than hearing himself talk, they might have gotten out on time. I think it’s an awful display of disloyalty to someone he works with to just blame them in a public fashion like that. WTNH is swirling the drain and it’s in part because of people like Mark Davis.
Come on. At four minutes of the hour, three minutes of, two minutes, of, somebody should have been bright enough to disable the automatic switchover by the darned computer. This is a hotl-contested U.S. Senate seat, for heaven’s sake.
It doesn’t matter who or what might have been at fault. Mark is a member of a “team” and should never have pointed the finger at a colleague. He could have explained it in “we” terms.
As someone who has produced about a dozen debates on live TV, I can tell you that the timing of a debate gets dicey from word one. You have to build in extra time (padding) in every segment. It’s not easy, and there is no guide book I know of.
Automated time schedules work fine for routine programming. For a live event, the “timers” need to be off auto-pilot. This is not hard.
Monday morning quarterbacking:
at 9:00p Law and Order,
at 8:59p hit the station ID,
at 8:58p thanks and goodnight,
at 8:54p the R makes closing comment,
at 8:53p intro R closing,
at 8:49p the D makes closing comment,
at 8:48p intro D closing.
Where’s the mystery? Yeah, blame’s
fun, that’s what Producers are for.
Dump the audience, get back
to content. For Democracy’s sake.
Catspaw, it’s not as straight forward as you think. People aren’t robots; as we see in all debates, they don’t stop talking because you tell them their time is up. That said,some sort of error was made by WTNH — the most distasteful was by Mark Davis’ explanation.
CT Daze is correct. We are not robots. What we are is experienced thinking creatures who can hit time cues night after night and when the candidates know the rules the out isn’t a big deal.
As far as guide books to production basics there’s dozens and dozens of nightly experiences that tell us what to expect and what to do when the unexpected happens. That’s called experience.
“WTNH — the most distasteful was by Mark Davis’ explanation.” What was Davis doing blaming the Producer? Cheap shot? Obviously the easy way out and sometimes true.
You don’t do it in a press release. Then again why not, it’s just someone’s job in the balance and their kid’s futures.
Again, eliminate the audience, they add nothing and rob all of us of adult conversations about our futures.
Tom Monahan wouldn’t throw someone under the bus!
the debate of these 2 people is like watching 2 10 year old fighting for class president enough
McMahon playing to her base? Paralysed children on her Senate resume? Or a paralysed country from GOP obstruction? Oh, wait, it’s all the same. Never mind.
Davis, Dennis House, Al Terzi and Keisha Grant all hosted the debate yesterday. Afterwards House Tweeted out thanks to Terzi & Grant but didn’t mention Davis. Can Dennis not count heads on the crowded panelist table?
I believe Mark no longer uses twitter.
Probably because Davis is a huge ego and threw all of the panalists under the bus by saying they cant ask questions we haven’t heard answers for.
At least he knows how to spell panelists.