Joani Wardwell of the Commission on Presidential Debates leads a group of media representatives near the Ford Center. UM photo by Harry Briscoe.
OXFORD, Miss. - Officially, the media circus that is the
first 2008 Presidential Debate won't start until the fourth
week of September. Unofficially, it began Wednesday.
That's when dozens of producers and technical advisors from
local and national news organizations visited the
University of Mississippi for a site inspection. Their job:
to look around campus, kick the tires and determine exactly
what it's going to take to present this event to the
world.
The exit polls are favorable.
"It's a lovely setting," said John Reade, a veteran CBS
senior producer who covered the 1976 Presidential Debate
and the 1988 Vice Presidential Debate. "The Ford Center is
a beautiful theater. You're going to have hundreds of media
types running around so it'll be crazy, but debates are
fun. Everything is going to work out fine."
Representatives for the Commission on Presidential Debates
hosted local and regional media in the morning, with
national news outlets such as ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox
News touring in the afternoon. They were at UM to scout
locations and coordinate behind-the-scenes details that
viewers never think about - including where to place
satellite trucks, how far they'll have to run cable and the
like.
"The Ford Center is going to look great, given the sit-down
format of the debate," said Glenn Elvington, operations
producer for ABC News. "But it's not going to be any more
challenging here than it would be anywhere else. It's just
a matter of dealing with what we've been given, how the
campus is laid out."
Meanwhile, NBC News Channel producer Julie Jarvis had
something far less technical on her mind. During a lull,
she was busy telling her team in Washington, D.C., to start
booking hotel rooms, which are expected to be at a premium.
Other than that, she's already envisioning the stories
she'd like to tell.
"I wanted to come, meet people and make contacts," Jarvis
said. "There's a very rich history here that should make
the debate that much more interesting. With Ole Miss'
history, the fact that America's first black nominee from a
major political party is coming here ... it kind of brings
things full circle."
Marty Slutsky, executive producer for the Commission on
Presidential Debates, said that the media site visit went
as expected, adding that logistical challenges are just
part of the process.
"The hotels, telecommunications and media tent issues have
all been sorted out," said Slutsky, who is familiar with
the Ford Center from his work on Mississippi Rising, a
Hurricane Katrina relief concert in 2005 . "But all those
things are fairly standard, and to me were not an issue.
Now, everything is locked and loaded and we're ready to
move ahead on September 26."
For more on the upcoming debate visit:
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