Campaign comedy
From the "Wolf Blitzer Reports" staff
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- An estimated 62.5 million viewers watched the first presidential debate Thursday night.
But when the debate ended, many viewers changed the channel before the traditional post-debate analysis by journalists and political spinsters.
Many of them waited a half hour, and got their post-debate analysis elsewhere -- like Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."
Industry reports say Jon Stewart's post-debate show on Comedy Central earned Stewart his highest rating ever, nearly 2.5 million viewers.
It wasn't just the cable comedians getting in their licks.
If you didn't hear Dan Rather discuss the debate on CBS, you might have heard David Letterman discuss the debate on CBS.
"In the debate Bush appeared confident, he appeared relaxed, he appeared calm. That's right, he's drinking again," Letterman said.
NBC's "Saturday Night Live" offered its own take on the debate, and enjoyed its highest season-premiere overnight rating in three years.
Actors portraying Jim Lehrer, President Bush and Senator Kerry performed a skit including the following exchange:
Moderator: When you say crush the terrorists, how exactly do you plan to do that?
Bush: By working hard.
Kerry: The fact of the matter is, I have consistently supported the war in front of pro-war audiences, and condemned it when speaking to groups that opposed it. That is not flip-flopping, that is pandering, and Americans deserve a president who knows the difference.
While most of the entertainers who do political comedy on television deny having any partisan agenda, they do have an audience, especially among younger adults.
A recent survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center showed adults between the ages of 18 and 29 are less likely to watch television news than the general audience and more likely to watch late night comedy.
And in a recent survey by the Pew Research center, 21 percent of younger adults said they are learning about the presidential campaign from satirical sources.
Like Jay Leno, host of NBC's "The Tonight Show," who recently said, "Kerry's people have trouble preparing him for the debate. They keep telling him he doesn't talk like the regular, average Joe, and Kerry said, "Au contraire."
