The Breakfast Meeting: Debate No. 1 Arrives, and NBC Likes Three New Shows

By BILL BRINK

The media world's focus is solidly locked on Denver as Wednesday's first presidential debate between President Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, approaches. Jeff Zeleny provides a guide for viewers in The Times, and writes that there will be six segments of 15 minutes, “with ample opportunity for robust exchanges and a level of specificity that both sides have often sought to avoid.''

• Jim Rutenberg and Jeremy W. Peters report on the president's advantage in television ad spending, as out he outspends Mr. Romney in key battleground states, sometimes by a wide margin. The disparity, they write, has led to fears among Republicans that Mr. Romney's team has “simply been outmatched by Mr. Obama's in its approach to advertising and the way it goes about buying ad time on television.''
• The two candidates have been engaged in intense preparation for the debates, practicing against stand-in opponents as they try to hone their arguments, The Wall Street Journal reports. Mr. Romney has done full run-throughs against Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, in a setting meant to closely recreate the one for the debate Wednesday night. Mr. Obama has been sequestered at a resort outside Las Vegas and has practiced against Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, standing in as Mr. Romney.

• In an interactive graphic, The Times allows readers to study the body language of the two candidates, broken down by an analyst with the New York University Movement Lab, with an eye toward how it might shape viewers' opinions during the debate.

• Peter Lattman reports in DealBook on an interesting phenomenon in election campaigns around the country. Candidates are demonizing Wall Street, relentlessly attacking their opponents for their “ties to banks and bailouts,'' even though many of the connections are tenuous at best.

 

The Drudge Report generated a wav e of interest promoting a video that Tucker Carlson discussed with Sean Hannity on Fox News, billing it as a racially charged speech by President Obama in 2007. Mr. Carlson acknowledged that he had reported on the video back in 2007, but he disagreed that it was an old story, the Web site Mediate reported. He said the media back then focused on Mr. Obama's prepared remarks, and not the ad-libs, which Mr. Carlson said contained divisive remarks.

NBC, which hasn't had much to celebrate lately in terms of prime-time television, moved quickly to reaffirm some early fall season success, Bill Carter writes for The Times. The network renewed three new shows for a full season of episodes: the drama “Revolution,” and two comedies, “Go On,” starring Matthew Perry, and “The New Normal,” about a gay couple and a surrogate mother. The three had done particularly well in terms of delayed viewing, with their ratings increasing significantly through DVR viewings after they were initially shown on television.