• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, March 7, 2024

Tuesday night while watching one of the network’s coverage of the primary election results, I said aloud, “Are they really still doing this?”

The “this” was the way all the networks cover these election nights in a way that in one way or another, dates back to the dawn of television.

Talking heads arrayed in a vague semicircle contributing their two cents to “discussions” about the issues, the candidates, what will happen next, etc. -- this is the style that fills the airwaves on such occasions, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” wrote the Bard.

It is the “what will happen next” part that rings the hollowest. When the talking heads start prognosticating both before and after the results are in for the various primary states, I’m reminded of the hype surrounding a pending prizefight or the Kentucky Derby.

Like racehorses, the commentators jockey for position. Who will emerge as the most serious and authoritative? Who will get the most minutes of playing time, like an NBA game?

One of the predictions that made the rounds on Super Tuesday as the evening wore on and Trump won state after state was the one that predicted Nikki Haley would drop out of the race within the next 12 hours or so. 

This prediction was not exactly like going out on a limb. It didn’t take an expert to predict it either -- a real expert or a fake one.

Presiding over the roundtables as always were the pompous network news anchors in the best chair positions.

In every election season, they lead these discussions as if they are talking to the rest of us from some sort of network-television Mount Olympus.

Because they are on TV every weekday reading the evening news, we are supposed to regard them as experts -- not only on Super Tuesday, but on all other occasions.

“A mile wide and an inch deep” was the legendary description of the typical TV news anchor once upon a time. 

That description was told to me by a longtime anchorman, quoting another one. It’s not the other way around -- an inch wide and a mile deep.

Making up the rest of the panels as usual were network political correspondents, a bunch of other people with titles such as “former communications director for [fill in blank]” and “political consultant” (talk about a mile wide and an inch deep), and a smattering of others such as “radio talk show host” and the like.

As entertaining as some of our radio talk shows may be, it should go without saying that they are very expert in talking, but generally speaking, not expert about anything they’re talking about.

Maybe someone reading this can answer this question: When did TV news start covering the one-candidate, incumbent primaries as if they are equal in importance to the other party primaries in which the candidates are in a legitimate race for delegates?

On Tuesday night, President Biden’s state-by-state victories in the Democratic primaries were writ large across our TV screens showing him winning these dubious contests by 90-plus percentages.

Perhaps only I would make this linkage: The only leaders who win elections in the world by 90-plus percent are people like Putin. 

I am certainly not saying Biden is like Putin, but suffice it to say, Biden’s primary victories on Super Tuesday merited bottom-of-the-page play, not banner headlines across TV screens.

True, Biden did have a competitor -- the gadfly Jason Palmer, who won the all-important American Samoa primary on Super Tuesday, 51 votes to 40. Even this was ballyhooed as “dealing a blow” to Biden.

For the network TV newsies and their cadres of commentators, this week presents two opportunities to seize the limelight.

The second unfolds Thursday night with the President delivering his annual State of the Union address. 

The most obvious talking point both before and after will be his age and whether he will falter or triumph.

Here’s a prognostication that all who are reading this are welcome to dismiss: Expect the State of the Union to attract a bigger-than-usual audience.