Election 2009 Coverage Wrap Up

As expected, Fox News performed very well on election night, beating all the other news networks hands down for the prize of the most watched coverage.  The network averaged 4.04m total viewers between 8pm and 11pm, before going to taped programming at midnight ET.  MSNBC was second on the night, albeit an out of sight second, averaging 974,000 total viewers, although causing some controversy by cutting to tape at 10pm ET for an Olbermann re-run, and calling the Bloomberg race prematurely.  HLN rated in third place with 842,000 total viewers in the same period, but yet again, CNN languished behind in fourth palce, managing just 826,000 total viewers across the period.

The news networks have been actively and heavily promoting their election night coverage in recent weeks, and with some late races in the count, many expected the networks to stay live until all the results were in and to allow for extended analysis.  This however, did not turn out to be the case, with MSNBC being the worst culprit, by breaking into its coverage at 10pm ET for a repeat of Keith Olbermann's 8pm ET show.  In the interests of fairness, MSNBC did break into the repeat to update the election results, before finishing off the repeat, but still, its an election night.  The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz tweeted about the Olbermann repeat, saying; "The usual Countdown rerun, on Election Night?"

Fox News stayed live until midnight ET when it switched to pre-recorded programmes, whilst CNN stayed live on air until 1am ET with a special live edition of Larry King at midnight.

The biggest media headline grabber of the night however, belongs to MSNBC, who prematurely called the New York mayoral race in favour of Michael Bloomberg at 9:39pm ET only to retract it a little time later.  Rachel Maddow broke the news, initially saying; "NBC News can project Michael Bloomberg was re-elected mayor of New York City. He's the projected winner having spent in excess of $100 million to win himself a third term over Bill Thompson. 7% precincts reporting, but we can project Michael Bloomberg winning."

Not long after, Maddow retracted the call, explaining; "NBC News, relying on a local election monitoring service called EMR to call tonight's race - that call has been retracted." 

It was not until just after 11pm ET that MSNBC again made the call in favour of Bloomberg, but this time based on an NBC News projection.