Election Night: A Television History 1948 – 2012

In November 2012, the United States elected a president. Also right around the same time, author Stephen Battaglio released his latest book, an e-book to be exact, Election Night: A Television History 1948-2012. As described by the publisher, the book “is a fascinating and revealing look at the evolution of U.S. presidential election night broadcasts and how since 1948, this televised event galvanizes the nation. It explores the technical advancements in vote counting, live coverage from the field, how the networks get polling information and call a state for a candidate and how the drama unfolds in the control room. Through the lens of NBC News, Election Night highlights significant commentary by legendary news figures such as Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, John Chancellor, Tom Brokaw, Tim Russert, and Brian Williams.”

The book makes the most of the Kindle platform, utilizing the NBC large video archives, as well as offering historical audio clips in an enhanced edition [available here [or iTunes link here]. To find out more about his latest project, Battaglio accepted my invitation for another interview (I first interviewed him in 2011 regarding his book on NBC Today Show’s 60-year history.)

Tim O’Shea: You pull data for the book, including congressional hearings as well as the David Brinkley Papers/Archives. What was the biggest surprise/most interesting aspect of delving into Brinkley’s papers?

Stephen Battaglio: I loved David Brinkley. He is my favorite TV news anchor of all time. The humor that he managed to inject in his on-air commentary came across in his papers, especially in personal letters and internal memos. What you saw on screen was his true self.

O’Shea: This project is a multimedia property, which includes audio and video clips, how did you go about picking what to include?

Battaglio: A lot of it had to do with what was available in the NBC News archives. Every hour of Election Night 1960 exists as does everything after 1976. But there was little from 1964 or 1968. So if we did not have the most dramatic moments of the election coverage we tried to offer something that was representative of how it looked that night. We also included important political TV moments of the 1960s such as President Johnson’s “Daisy” ad and the riots at the Democratic convention in Chicago. I think TV news footage is a great way to learn history. We have about 90 minutes of it in the enhanced version of the e-book which works great on the iPad.

O’Shea: But you can read a text-only version on a Kindle.

Battaglio: Correct. There are additional photos in the non-enhanced edition.

O’Shea: While the main focus is the television history, I appreciated you delving into the radio influence on politics prior to television”s impact. Had you been well-versed in radio’s impact before embarking on the book?

Battaglio: No, and it was important. In any history of television, you need to look at radio first. One thing I learned is that the development of radio journalism was restrained by the government in the 1930s at the behest of the newspaper industry, which feared competition. That all went away with the gathering storm in Europe. It was fascinating to learn that regular radio broadcasting began on KDKA in 1920 with the presidential election results.

O’Shea: You focus a lot on the years when the broadcast news networks were dominant. Did we see the same level of punditry or speculation that we see today in 24-hour cable news?

Battaglio: There was not the immediacy or saturation that we see today. But like now, there was plenty of prognosticating. In the days before the 1968 election – the three-way race with Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace – there was intense speculation over how none of the candidates would get 270 electoral votes and that the presidency would be decided by the House of Representatives.

O’Shea: Of the anchors/reporters you interviewed, would you say Tom Brokaw was one that had seen the most change in the election night TV history?

Battaglio: Brokaw provides a connectivity to NBC’s past and present. He worked with Brinkley, who was part of NBC’s first Election Night on TV in 1952, and he’s part of the team that handled the 2012 coverage. No other news anchor can give you that kind of historical perspective.

O’Shea: In writing about the RFK Assassination, were there elements about the tragedy’s coverage that you had not known?

Battaglio: That the networks were really hesitant over providing wall-to-wall coverage of another Kennedy funeral. They were worried that the public couldn’t handle it. No matter how contentious America seems today, there has never been anything like 1968. We include a clip of David Brinkley expressing fear that the country was headed towards a police state. It was pretty mind-blowing.

O’Shea: Of all the technological innovations introduced in election coverage, what do you think was the biggest game changer?

Battaglio: The use of exit polling to call election results in 1980. It was so fast and accurate, it was seen as interfering with the process as you could call the presidential election before polls on the west coast closed.

O’Shea: Is there any chance you would ever consider doing a history of late night TV?

Battaglio: Bill Carter’s books on late night have covered that territory pretty well. I’m happy to take suggestions on other TV related subjects. Especially from publishers.

What recently garnered my interest about this seemingly obscure club of the early 1980s? Well I stumbled across a YouTube video of Allen Ginsberg appearing at the club. I am hoping to find out more about the club in the coming weeks (looking at the folks on the fan page, it appears that many of the folks are friends with many of my Atlanta art scene fans–so I am hoping to mine their collective knowledge). But for today, I offer the video (plus a link to the second part). Enjoy.

What really surprises me about my ignorance of this club? Less than 10 years later in the early 1990s, my then girlfriend and I rented an apartment less than a mile from the club’s former location.

Anyways, you should go read the piece. Consider this excerpt.

But in most other respects Mr. Hitchens is undiminished, preferring to see himself as living with cancer, not dying from it. He still holds forth in dazzlingly clever and erudite paragraphs, pausing only to catch a breath or let a punch line resonate, and though he says his legendary productivity has fallen off a little since his illness, he still writes faster than most people talk. Last week he stayed up until 1 in the morning to finish an article for Vanity Fair, working on a laptop on his bedside table.

Added bonus, GAO is also on YouTube, leading to this slightly amusing video (as important and as much as I value the GAO, the music on this video cracks me up).  Honestly, I ask you to watch the video and try to ignore the music (really hard to do) because the mission of the GAO is a valuable one.

Ironbound describes itself as “Seth Kramer, Daniel A. Miller, and Jeremy Newberger are Ironbound Films. Headquartered in an old inn on the Hudson River opposite West Point, Ironbound crafts video for theaters, television, museums, and the web.”

Here’s a preview:

The blog, Nothing But the Doc, noted that the project “will feature interviews with Sally Jesse Raphael, Chris Elliott, Al Sharpton and Pat Buchanan”. Some sites say it will be ready in 2011, others say 2012. Either way, given how much Downey fascinated me many years ago, I would be curious to hear the perspective from his former friends and associates.

To mark the day, the organization had a video short produced. As detailed in this press release: “The two-minute short, specially commissioned for International Women’s Day, sees 007 star Daniel Craig undergo a dramatic makeover as he puts himself, quite literally, in a woman’s shoes.

Directed by acclaimed ‘Nowhere Boy’ director/conceptual artist Sam Taylor-Wood, scripted by Jane Goldman (‘Kick Ass’) and featuring the voice of Dame Judi Dench reprising her role as ‘M’, the film will be screened in cinemas and streamed online in a bid to highlight the levels of inequality that persist between men and women in the UK and worldwide. It is the first film featuring Bond to be directed by a woman.”

Thanks to Dustin Harbin for making me aware of the video.

Watch the full episode. See more American Masters.

Here’s how the History Channel describes the show:

“What if the history you knew was only half the story? Brad Meltzer’s Decoded investigates the other half: the secret history of the symbols and codes that surround us everyday. Best-selling author Brad Meltzer has been writing novels for more than a decade. He has studied and written about some of the most revered institutions and documents in human history, including the U.S. Supreme Court, the Presidency, the Secret Service, Wall Street and the Bible. Brad has assembled a team to investigate the countless clues and theories uncovered through his years of research, but unexplored until now. From the dollar bill to the first Presidential Codes, the hidden messages of the Statue of Liberty and the ciphers protecting the location of lost Confederate gold, the team uncovers the truth behind history’s most provocative secrets.”

The show looks to be an interesting premise, plus I’m jealous that his show is sponsored by Porsche and that the hosts get to drive a Porsche as part of the show. I look forward to seeing it on December 2.

In preparation for the upcoming speech, Mark Bialczak of The Post-Standard interviewed Hamill. It covers a great deal of ground and is well worth your time reading. (Hat tip to Poynter’s Romenesko for the link)

I am hard pressed to find one quote that stands out, but here’s a snippet of one great exchange in the interview:

What can news organizations, media organizations, do to help keep consumer interest in words and images survive, not just videos and links?

I think they have to begin in high school. They have to somehow find ways to convince teachers that they have to turn their students onto real news sites, not TMZ, where you find celebrity stuff, not the endless life and times of Jon Gosselin, whoever the hell he is.

Hamill has an insightful perspective on the newspaper industry.

Tim O’Shea: How do you go about tracking down obscure audio like “Actual audio from the 1947 educational film Using The Bank“. And from there, how do you typically go about writing the script that you run in parallel with the animation. Do you write the script before starting the animation work?

Scott Bateman: There is a wealth of amazing material in the Prelinger Archives at archive.org, a web site that hosts a vast array of public domain material. The Prelinger Archives specializes in short educational and industrial films from the 1940s and 1950s–hygiene, cold war propoganda, juvenile delinquency, it’s all there. Man, I can spend hours on that site!

My writing process for these animations goes something like this: I’ll end up watching a film several times while I animate it, because I’ll go through once and animate bodies, then another time through for mouths, another for hands, etc. So by the time I add the commentary, I already have a ton of snarky comments about the film at my disposal. I’ll put in the comments I most want in the movie first, then fill in the holes between.

O’Shea: As of August 3, according to you “The “10,000 3×5″ project is 8.5% done–that’s 850 drawings!” What motivates you to take on ambitious projects like that and Bateman 365? How do you avoid getting in over your head, with your various project commitments–and do you make due with less sleep than some folks?

Bateman: For some reason, I like to take on a project like making an animated film every day or making an entire feature film all by myself just to see if I can do it. That’s the fun.

O’Shea: Some of your work appears at Salon.com, while other work appears at True/Slant or Daily Kos. Do you develop unique content with one site in mind, or do you develop it with the thinking it could appear at any site?

Bateman: Sadly, Salon.com is restructuring, so my animations won’t be appearing there anymore. I’m actually pretty happy about this, because I’ve been doing way too much political work the past 18 months. I’m looking forward to taking a break from watching Chris Matthews every day. It’s a chance to think about other sorts of projects. But, I always get drawn back into politics again eventually.

O’Shea: When you and King Features parted company back in 2005, you wrote this Daily Kos piece explaining why. The essay concluded with the line: “So now, I’m out of work, and nobody’s beating down my door to hire me.” How worried were you when you wrote that–and is your livelihood more stable and/or rewarding than you might have imagined back in 2005?

Bateman: Actually, I’m right back in that position now! But this time, I’m not worried at all. Something always comes up. I’m much more prepared mentally for sudden unemployment these days. I used that period of unemployment in 2005 to get the heck out of politics for awhile, and it did me a world of good, and I was tanned, rested and ready when the 2008 primaries got under way.

O’Shea: You have developed animation for TV in the past, but I’m curious–as hulu.com and YouTube.com as well as other streaming video grow in influence, are you as keen to develop for television?

Bateman: Here’s the thing about TV: if you’re a musician, you can start an indie band. You can make a good movie outside the Hollywood studios. But there’s really never been an “indie TV” scene (well, Public Access, but that’s not at the same scale as an indie record label with national distribution; plus, it’s really goofy-ass). The Internet finally levels that playing field. Generally, to do a TV show you need a few dozen people and the support of the netwrok and its advertisers. Lots and lots of money. Online, you and your friends can do some short videos without the network middleman or much cash. The size of the audience won’t be the same, of course, but the good stuff generally finds its audience.

I would do TV again if I could do it with as little interference as possible from The Suits. That is nearly impossible these days; I was really quite fortunate to have had a TV experience where I could make a show on my laptop, drop it off at the network, and they would just air it–no meetings about ratings, no pleasing advertisers. It’s unheard of to have that sort of freedom in TV, especially for a newbie. Sadly, that only lasted three episodes, but still. I don’t expct it’ll happen again, but wouldn’t it be awesome if it did?

O’Shea: Has the level of political comedy fodder increased/decreased or stayed the same for you since the U.S. presidential transition?

Bateman: In a way, I don’t feel like the tenor of the campaign ever really went away, and in fact the oppostion has gotten louder. It’s also gotten more moronic, so there’s lots of humor there. There’s also humor on the other side, with the Democrats being too timid to use their mandate and 60-seat Senate majority to actually do this thing that over 70% of the public wants, a public option for health care.

O’Shea: Have you heard from anyone involved in the 1960 original film of Atom Age Vampire? What was the response to your reworking of the film when it showed late last month at the Woods Hole Film Festival?

Bateman: I have not yet heard from anyone involved with the original film; they would have to be pretty old by now. Plus, I imagine they let it lapse into the public domain for a reason (that reason being: they’re not so proud of it).

The response to the film at screenings is amazing and humbling–it really helps to see the movie with a big audience, because everyone starts laughing and had a great time.

O’Shea: What other festivals will the film be shown at–and do you intend to do a full-length project like that in the near to long term?

Bateman: Atom Age Vampire is screening at the Tacoma Film Festival in October, and I’ll probably do another New York screening towards Halloween. I’m starting to think about the next feature film, but this time I want to raise a little money first. I spent literally zero dollars to actually make Atom Age Vampire, but I’ve had to spend a few thousand to try and get it out into the world. So I want to raise some of those funds beforehand this time. Not a lot; probably a nice, mid-four-figure budget.

O’Shea: Looking at your music posts like this one, when you really have to get a great deal of work done in a short amount of time, are there certain motivational songs you rely upon to pull you through?

Bateman: It’s not so much that particular songs motivate me, but merely the fact that certain bands exist and make a career doing exactly what they want to do: Stereolab, Sonic Youth, tons of others.

O’Shea: How did you go about selecting the guest essays that were featured in your 2006 book, Sketchbook of Secrets & Shame? Would you ever want to do another book like that down the road?

Bateman: There are about a dozen essays in that book–about half of them were people I knew, like John Kovalic (Dork Tower), or friends of friends (Wil Wheaton). The other half were people I approached because I was a fan of theirs, and had this strange idea that if I was a fan of theirs, they might also become a fan of mine. This is why I approached Dr. & Mr. Doris Haggis-On-Whey, which is a pseudonym of Dave Eggers. I emailed a request for a short essay, and I received back one of the funniest single sentences ever.

O’Shea: Any other projects on the horizon for you that you’d like to discuss?

Bateman: Well, with my Salon.com gig over, I’m trying to launch a number of things–seeing what I want to do, and what I can make a small amount of money doing. I’m also still trying to find a broader audience for Atom Age Vampire; I know from indie film-making friends that it can take two years or more of constantly getting it out there. Fun!