THE DAILY BLADE: If it’s Monday (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday or Saturday) there must be another Republican debate on TV. There were 19 Republican debates during the 2007-08 primary election season, and the same number is booked for this primary election cycle.

Depending on circumstances (and “anyone has anything left to say”) The Washington Post notes  that “the orgy of primary debates is rapidly approaching record territory for a single party,” and asks, “what’s up with all this talk?” Veteran debate moderator and PBS newscaster Jim Lehrer provides a quick answer:

The explosion of primary debates reflects the influence of TV, especially cable TV, says [Lehrer] … The events are ready-made news programming for the likes of Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC and Bloomberg Television, all of which have been debate sponsors this cycle.

What’s more, unlike broadcast networks, which are loath to interrupt their prime-time schedules, cable networks have plenty of airtime and can live with the relatively small audiences (3.3 million watched the CNBC-sponsored debate last week) that the debates attract, he says.

The WaPo adds that these debates can cost roughly $1 million for a sponsor to host – including elaborate sets, cameramen and other staff, and the requisite spin room – outlays that are not offset by advertising, as there are typically few or no commercial breaks. Instead, the media sponsors get a shot of prestige out of the deal.

Or so they think. While watching the debates, viewers may be thinking less “Cronkite” and more “American Idol.”

The conventional wisdom has it that with the economy in the tank, voters have a personal stake in the outcome of the election and are tuning in to assess the candidates far earlier than usual (Huckabee campaign manager Ed Rollins tells The WaPo, “The debates have kind of been a testing ground for a bunch of people not well known by the potential voters.”) but there’s something else attracting viewers: drama:

[According to] Republican pollster Whit Ayres, “The only well-known candidate – [former MA Gov. Mitt] Romney – has significant pockets of resistance in the party. And the alternatives to Romney, other than [former House speaker Newt] Gingrich are all relatively unknown nationally.”

The high entertainment value of the debates – or as the WaPo puts it, “glitzy sets, vocal audiences and introductions that sometimes sound straight from the sporting world – have turned them into “a form of reality TV, competitions familiar to many Americans”:  

“Americans are used to watching competitions involving large numbers of contestants and watching the fields get whittled down,” said Tom Rath, a GOP strategist and Romney adviser based in New Hampshire. “The debates have made the campaign accessible to the public in an understandable format much earlier and easier than ever before.”

Rath is not the only one who’s noticed this. Steve Schmidt, a member of AZ Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2008, tells The New York Times that shows like “American Idol” have conditioned viewers to “watch a performance and render an immediate judgment”:

These days, he said, those judgments are made not by professional journalists who seek out campaign staff members in the “spin room” immediately after the debate and shape the conclusions.

“Now, it’s instantaneous. It’s a harsh, tough verdict that is rendered not by the political insiders but by the body politic.”

The Times makes that point that the candidates – who are “genuine media personalities,” like Gingrich and Rep. Michele Bachmann (MN) who are regulars on network and cable news programs and former Godfather Pizza CEO Herman who was a radio talk show host -- are playing along:

[T]he current crop of Republican candidates are not the typical collection of middle-age, somewhat boring governors or senators, said Ronald A. Klain, former chief of staff to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and who has served as a debate coach to numerous presidential and vice-presidential candidates. Many are genuine media personalities who know how to use the television camera to their advantage. …

“The Republican field is more of a collection of media figures than it is actual candidates,” Mr. Klain noted. “They are highly telegenic. If your job was to cast a reality series called ‘The Republican Presidential Debates,’ this is the group that you would want cast for that program.”

Most people, he said, like to watch a narrative that plays out over the course of several episodes. The debates this year have had that kind of feel for viewers.
 

Making the same point, but in a classier way, The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan writes that she has “never seen TV debates play such a prominent role in a nominating process” and attributes the early and intense interest to voters being “deeply concerned about America's future”:  

They're shopping for a new president, and TV is an easy way to judge the merchandise. It's live, so that if something dramatic happens – some flub, some breakthrough – it won't be removed in the editing.

And the debates have developed an internal arc of their own. Because they've been held so regularly… people can see particular candidates rise and fall, they can see their dramas play out. This one impresses you against your will (that would be Newt Gingrich), that one consistently fails to gain his footing (Rick Perry.) And so the debates have gained a reputation as decisive: They did in Pawlenty, made Cain, solidified Romney.

The debates have proved decisive for the media, as well. A recent study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism finds that how the candidates fare in the debates significantly affects the tone of coverage they get. The performance of Romney has been solid and steady from debate to debate, and his coverage – in both traditional and social media outlets – has remained constant (about one-quarter positive, one-quarter negative and one-half neutral, according to Pew). In contrast, TX Gov. Rick Perry has been on a rollercoaster ride both in the debates and in the media. 

When Perry was threatening to skip one or more debates because they clearly weren’t doing him any good,  WaPo political handicapper Chris Cillizza observed, “[w]hile the viewership isn’t close to ‘American Idol’ levels, the number of eyeballs on any given debate are far higher than Perry could help to attract in a week’s worth of appearances in Iowa or New Hampshire.” One of Romney’s pollsters estimated that the 20 million viewers who watched the debates in September and October just about equaled the number of voters who cast ballots in the 2008 GOP presidential primaries.

And ancillary online media – Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, streaming video – has had a multiplier effect of stoking viewer interest in the debates and candidate exposure.

At this stage of the campaign, no candidate – with the possible exception of Romney himself – could afford to buy enough commercial air time in enough markets to have this sort of reach so the debates equal the playing field for less well-funded candidates, like Gingrich and Cain.

In an interview with The WaPo, Jonathan Collegio, communications director for American Crossroads said:

For the first time in decades, primary debates aren’t a sideshow, as candidates are using them as a major platform in lieu of early TV ads to project their ideas, personalities and candidacies. Campaigns have been smart to figure out that with all the increasing news coverage, a few strong debate performances are worth more than millions on early TV ads, and a weak appearance is worth more than a book [of opposition research].

Elections can be bought, but the debates are a pure meritocracy and offer every candidate an equal chance to make an impression – good or bad – on voters, even those given just 89 seconds of airtime.

That said, a Pew Research Center for the People & the Press survey conducted between  September 29^th and October 2^nd asking 1,000 respondents to recall the name at least one Republican candidate without any prompting – this, after a string of  Republican debates had already taken place – found that Perry and Romney came to mind amongst only 28 percent and 27 percent, respectively, and Rep, Michele Bachmann, amongst just 15 percent. Every other candidate was in the single digits.

The candidates fared a bit better amongst Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in the Pew survey – Perry and Romney were tied at 36 percent recall; Bachmann came in second at 18 percent; Cain was recalled by 15 percent; and Gingrich and Rep. Ron Paul were tied at 10 percent.

In the poll, 27 percent said they were following news about the candidates or the campaign “very closely,” but a breakdown of the responses by party affiliation reveals that 32 percent of Republicans are paying close attention to campaign news vs. just 22 percent of Democrats and 21 percent of independents.

Political junkies who have watched every one of the debates may feel overwhelmed – especially when they are scheduled only a few days apart – but each debate gives voters who are watching them sporadically a new opportunity to get to know more a bit more about the candidates. The Pew findings suggest that there can’t be too many debates, given that even top tier candidates don’t readily come to mind amongst the majority of Republicans. 

Nine more Republican debates are currently planned between now and March 19, 2012. The race has proved very volatile (click here for related article), with various candidates moving in and out of the top tier alongside Romney – which meant that from one debate to the next, a particular candidate would get lavished with face time or be treated as a footnote.

According to the latest FOX News poll, Gingrich is now in a statistical tie with Romney for frontrunner status amongst Republican primary voters (23 percent, and 22 percent, respectively) – and leads Romney 35 percent vs. 15 percent amongst Teapublicans. Most of the voters surveyed by FOX (56 percent) thought the presidential debates provided valuable information about the candidates, and based on what they learned thus far, a majority think that Romney and Gingrich have the experience to replace President Barack Hussein Obama (59 percent and 58 percent, respectively) – amongst Republican voters, these numbers zoom up to 79 percent for Gingrich and 72 percent for Romney.

A honking caveat: 60 percent of respondents – including half of Gingrich and Cain supporters, and almost 7 in 10 Romney supporters – said they could shift their support to another candidate.

Thus, when the field has been winnowed down to Romney and the Anyone But Romney candidate, voters may realize that 19 debates were not enough to familiarize them with the positions of both candidates.