Diminishing returns

Election Night is one of the increasingly rare moments when large numbers of Americans gather in front of their television sets to hear about politics. Although a comparison of the 2000 election night broadcasts with those of 1968 indicates that these programs have increasingly employed sophisticated projection techniques, they now contain less of the content that would help the public to understand why the election came out as it did, and what the outcome portends for the governing process. The same fast-paced, anchor-centered format that dominates and dilutes the content of the evening newscasts now also drives the content of election night broadcasts.