The power of television

The internet obsessives told us 2010 was going to be the year that the general election would be won or lost on the internet.   Really?   Well, television seems to be doing a pretty good job of setting the agenda so far.  

The general consensus seems to be that the seventy-six rules imposed upon the broadcasters did not stifle the inaugural debate.   Much as I enjoyed it and am glad it has been deemed a success, I did find the proceedings a little stilted as a result of the understandable fixation with timings.   And perhaps it was just me, but I still felt like Nick Clegg got the lion's share of the airtime - or was that just because he was doing such a good job of holding my (and the nation's) attention? 

Whether or not Clegg can maintain his bounce in the polls, his emergence from the political shadows is testimony to the power of television.   It seems incredible that the leader of the country's third party (hardly an obscure political entity) can gain so much traction simply from ninety minutes of unveneered televisual debate with his two main opponents.   

What is even more remarkable is that the last-but-one Liberal Democrat leader, Charles Kennedy, had a man-of-the-people message that was just as strong as Clegg's and which he conveyed in an affable style which I don't think Clegg himself has yet mastered.   Kennedy's opposition to the Iraq war screamed "different from the other two" more than anything Clegg said on Thursday night.   Yet the Scot's seven years as Lib Dem leader saw only incremental gains compared with the recent shift in public opinion of Clegg and his party.   The only thing Kennedy didn't have that Clegg did?   An hour and a half of primetime television.

So the blogosphere can carry on tweeting to itself while the box in the corner of the living room basks in its reaffirmed status as a superior power broker in the democratic process.