Talk Show Campaigns: Presidential Candidates on Daytime and Late Night Television by Michael Parkin

Author:Michael Parkin [Parkin, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Campaigns & Elections, Political Science, Political Process, Performing Arts, Television, General
ISBN: 9780415823364
Google: HG1CngEACAAJ
Goodreads: 18607634
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-01-15T14:14:57+00:00

This leaves the number of previous campaign appearances made by a candidate on a particular show the only factor, other than show type, to have an independent and direct affect on content. This effect is conditional, however, in that previous appearances only drive down personal discussion (with no effect on policy or campaign discussion) on network late night shows. Personal discussion is estimated to drop, all else equal, by 6% every time a candidate returns to shows like The Tonight Show or The Late Show.52 For example, John McCain’s visit to The Late Show on February 28, 2007, featured 29% personal content compared to 18% during his return visit on April 1, 2008, and 12% on October 16, 2008. This is a small counterbalance to the fact that network late night interviews, particularly with high-profile candidates late in the race, tend to favor personal topics over policy or campaign debate.

The results of this analysis show that, while entertainment talk show interviews almost always contain some discussion of personal matters, they also routinely feature a good deal of political material, especially on certain daytime (i.e., The View, Donahue) and cable late night shows (i.e., The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and Real Time) where viewers have become accustomed to a significant degree of political discussion and debate. In fact, the growth of these policy-laden interviews since the mid-2000s, which increasingly feature more obscure candidates earlier in the race, is adding to the balance found across most interviews on major network shows where popular candidates appeal to viewers with less intense political interests (see Figure 4.5). As such, the actual content found across hundreds of daytime and late night candidate interviews is more complex and nuanced than is often assumed.

Figure 4.5 The Process of Indirect Effects on Content

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