Planet Gadgets Gadget Blog

Internet Debate Attracts Huge Viewership

by Darren

The question is getting to be: just how influential is the internet when it comes to politics? It seems as if candidates will be ignoring the ‘Net at their own peril, especially when you see numbers like the one million viewers who watched a mashup of Democratic hopefuls debating.

Comedian Bill Maher, who asked one of four questions posed to each of the eight candidates, attracted viewers 42 percent of the time. He quizzed the hopefuls about the Ten Commandments, marijuana legalization, the relative dangers of sugar, coal dust and terrorism, and the climate-changing impact of cows.

Yahoo, HuffingtonPost.com and Slate.com conceived the format as a way to give online viewers the ability to build a debate with video blocks of each candidate answering different questions on education, health care and the war from PBS host Charlie Rose. A “wild-card” question came from Maher.

So the concept seems to be working. I’m sure this won’t be the last debate of this sort we see.