When is the second 2012 Presidential Debate? Theme, Watch Online

by Emily Sutherlin | October 16, 2012 at 01:52 pm

1071 views | 2 Recommendations | 0 comments

Hofstra University is pleased to host the second Presidential Debate, the town-hall format debate, on October 16, 2012.

Who's the moderator?
Candy Crowley, CNN's chief political correspondent. Both campaigns arevoicing concerns about Crowley, says Mark Halperin at TIME, whopublished a confidential memorandum of understanding, signed by Obama and Romney lawyers, stipulating that Crowley "will not ask follow-up questions... or otherwise intervene in the debate except to acknowledge the questioners from the audience or enforce the time limits, and invite candidate comments during the two-minute response period." Crowley hasmade it clear she's going to ignore those restrictions and ask follow-ups to the audience questions as she sees fit — and thank goodness, says Chris Cillizza at The Washington Post. "We are all in favor of 'regular' people getting to directly question the candidates," but let's face it, veteran journalists like Crowley are better than laypeople at asking sharper questions that "draw politicians out beyond their comfort zones." Let's put it in a sports context: "Does anyone think the NFL replacement refs were better than the regular refs?" Of course not. "Moderators matter."

Is there a theme to the debate?
No. According to the Commission on Presidential Debates, an audience of about 80 undecided voters chosen by Gallup will ask questions "on foreign and domestic issues." Crowley will pick which 11 or so audience membersget to ask their questions, and in what order.

What's the format?
Obama and Romney will field questions asked by the Gallup-selected undecided voters, with each candidate getting two minutes, then additional follow-up minutes at Crowley's discretion. According to the memorandum of understanding, the voter's mic is shut off as soon as the question is finished, with no chance for him or her to ask a follow-up.

Where to watch it live

The debate officially starts at 9 p.m. ET / 6 p.m. PT. It will last 90 minutes, and it will be moderated by CNN’s chief political correspondent Candy Crowley.
ABC News will be streaming the debate live on its YouTube channel as well as the YouTube politics channel and ABC’s iPad app.
NBC will stream the debate on its NBCPolitics.com site.
CBS News will have its live stream up on Ustream.
CNN will stream the debate on its website as well as to to its iOS apps.
Fox News will be streaming the debate on its site and feature some insights into the most popular topics of the evening through an exclusive collaboration with Twitter during its post-debate coverage.
The Wall Street Journal is providing a live feed of the debate on it site as well as through its WSJ Live apps on the iPad, on Android devices and various Smart TV platforms.
The Washington Post will stream the debate on its site.
Hulu will feature live feeds from ABC, Fox and The Wall Street Journal, including pre- and post-debate content.
Politico’s website will feature a pre-debate show starting at 5 p.m. PT as well as the actual debate and some post-debate coverage.
Univision’s live stream of the presidential debate will be translated into Spanish in real-time.
C-SPAN is going to stream the debate on it site as part of its debates hub. C-SPAN’s live feed comes with closed captions, which can be turned on here.
PBS Newshour will stream the entire debate on its site as well.
Microsoft’s Xbox will show the debate through the Elections 2012 app, which will also feature some live polling (Xbox LIVE gold membership required).
Aereo will give New York-based viewers two hours of free access to its TV streaming service to watch live streams of major broadcasters’ debate coverage on their laptops or mobile devices.

What to do during the debate

The rules both parties agreed on ahead of the debate can be found here.
The Peel companion app will allow Android users to digitally cheer and boo during the debate, and see how others like the performance of both candidates.
Ponderoo does something similar for iOS, but with a more playful UI.
ConnecTV will poll users of its second screen app (available for iPad, Windows and OS X) in real time about the performance of both candidates.
Al Jazeera English once again teamed up with Reddit for context and commentary during the debate.
Twitter is providing curated tweets on its #debates micro-site.
PolitiFact and Factcheck.org will be fact checking the debate in real time on Twitter – follow their accounts @politifact and @factcheckdotorg to see whether both candidates are telling the truth.
The Sunlight Foundation will again fact check the debate in real time and provide a live stream with contextual data as part of its Sunlight Live project.
The Debate Drinking Game is a less serious take on the rhetorics used during the event (please drink responsibly).

Where to catch up on the debate

Archived streams: Hulu, PBS Newshour, C-SPAN and many of the other sites mentioned above are making an archived stream of the entire event available after it concludes. Please let us know in the comments below if you can find the site where it goes up first!
Transcript: The Commission on Presidential Debates will host a transcript of the debate on its site.

We will update this post with new links right up to the start of the debate. Let us know in the comments if you come across any other good resources!

For more on how to watch news and other TV programming without paying for cable, check out my ebook Cut the Cord: All You Need to Know to Drop Cable.