NBC faces blowback over town hall
Network plans Trump event opposite scheduled Biden Q&A on ABC
NBC was battered with criticism on Wednesday after it announced plans for a Thursday town hall event with U.S. President Donald Trump to air opposite an already-scheduled ABC forum with his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden.
Top Democrats, media pundits, and many journalists inside NBC and MSNBC were taken aback by the network’s choice of the 8 p.m. time slot, which will make it impossible for Americans to watch both candidates live.
“The point of a news organization is to serve the public,” Vivian Schiller, a former executive at NBC, Twitter and National Public Radio, wrote on Twitter. “This is the opposite.”
Trump and Biden were scheduled to face off on Thursday in Miami at a formal debate — until last week, when Trump abruptly withdrew after the Commission on Presidential Debates decided to stage the event virtually over concerns that Trump could still be contagious with the coronavirus.
Biden arranged his own telecast with ABC, prompting Trump’s campaign to seek its own event that evening. After a lengthy negotiation — NBC wanted proof the president would not pose a health risk — the network announced its plans Wednesday.
Trump’s town hall event was patterned after a similar Biden forum that NBC had hosted on Oct. 5, the people said. It will be held at the same outdoor Miami venue, with the same format that features questions from Florida voters — and the same 8 p.m. time slot.
But given the conflict with Biden’s event on ABC, why not simply start Trump after the former vice-president finishes?
NBC officials argued internally that such a move could be problematic because many more American households watch television later in the evening. In theory, they argued, starting the event at 9 or 10 p.m. would grant Trump access to a larger potential live audience than Biden had for his NBC event on Oct. 5.
Why not hold the event on a different night? NBC executives insisted the date was their choice, the people said, and that Thursday fit the president’s schedule: Because of the nowcancelled second debate, Trump’s evening was free.
It was unclear if the Trump campaign would have accommodated a request by NBC to move the event to a different day. The president is trailing in many national polls and is eager for opportunities to make his case to a sizable audience. NBC declined to comment.
Numerous staff members at NBC and MSNBC expressed private dismay on Wednesday at their leaders’ decision. One former NBC News executive, Mark Lukasiewicz, who produced political conventions and candidate forums for the network, wrote on Twitter, “This is a bad result for American voters, who should not be forced to choose which to watch.”
In 2020, many Americans prefer to watch television programs at their own pace, using DVRs and online streams. Viewers who want to see what both Biden and Trump have to say on Thursday will have plenty of options to do so.
But presidential events have a unique draw, particularly at the height of the campaign: Biden and Trump’s first debate in Cleveland last month drew 73 million viewers. Neither town hall on Thursday is likely to come close to those numbers, given that formal debates air simultaneously across a dozen or more networks.
Still, by scheduling Trump against Biden, NBC may end up providing the president with one of his preferred talking points: The president is almost certain to score a higher Nielsen rating than Biden, since the event will also air on NBC’s sibling cable channels, MSNBC and CNBC.
Whether exposure to a mass audience is politically useful for Trump is also an open question: He received poor marks for his performance at last month’s debate.
NBC officials had held back on confirming the Trump event until they had credible evidence that the president would not pose a safety risk to other participants. The network did not explicitly say Trump had received a negative result from a PCR test the National Institutes of Health analyzed on Tuesday.