Nets Felt Pressure To Make Right Call

Election Night 2004 can be summed up in one word: caution.

None of the networks could afford another projection malfunction, so they bought the best assurances against making mistakes the size of Florida in 2000. They weren't going to call any state red or blue before its time.

"We were all extra cautious about calling a race or estimating a race," said Marcy McGinnis, senior vp news coverage at CBS News. "The competitor factor, four years ago and eight years ago, it was always there and this time, it was not there in the same way."

On Tuesday night, the magic mix of exit polls, results and other data led the networks' decision desks to call a number of states right away or close to it. But other states, like Pennsylvania and Florida and particularly Ohio, took much longer to decide even though the polls closed relatively early in the night. And although more than a few network executives thought that Tuesday might be an easy night, it wasn't long before they realized that wasn't going to happen.

"Compared to 2000, nothing is a surprise," said Jeff Greenfield, a CNN analyst who like most of the other TV journalists got on the air in the 6 p.m. ET hour and didn't leave the air until almost 12 hours later.

While the polls closed in Ohio at 7:30 p.m. ET, five hours later no network seemed ready to call what they knew by midnight Tuesday would end up being the deciding state. The networks' decision desks, which received the same data, pored over precinct info and for a long time decided that some key areas hadn't reported yet.

"A lot of them were close races. You had to wait for more data," said Dan Merkle, ABC News' decision desk director.

The break came after 12:30 a.m. Wednesday, when Fox News Channel called Ohio for Bush. Marty Ryan, vp political programming who was in the Fox News Channel control room, said the analysts were confident with the data and computer modeling.

"The only pressure we had was to be accurate," Ryan said. "We all knew that accuracy was the premium." NBC and MSNBC followed soon afterward. Phil Griffin, MSNBC's vp primetime programming, said Lester Holt was there to explain the decision desk's call and how many of the outstanding votes were coming from traditionally Republican southern Ohio. "It was thought out," Griffin said. But CBS and ABC held back because it wasn't clear whether Bush's margin could be overcome by the so-called provisional ballots that had yet to be counted.

"Our people were saying it was much too close and our data was not supporting a call at that place and time," McGinnis said Wednesday. "We weren't worried that someone else had called it."

Even with the call of Ohio for Bush, all of the networks' electoral counts were frozen short of the 270 required after 1 a.m., and that stayed the same until around 11 a.m., when word spread that Sen. John Kerry had conceded to President Bush.

Another issue that loomed large, particularly early in the coverage, was the accuracy of the exit polls. Word of some of the polls' results leaked on the Internet and, while they weren't used by any network, mention was made by some commentators about how those polls favored Kerry.

In the end, there were no major gaffes and nothing anywhere near the level of the 2000 coverage on any network. Al Tompkins, a TV journalism expert at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., said there was plenty riding on the networks' performance.

"They rose to the occasion. They were really cautious and very slow to call big states," Tompkins said. "This time, it was not at all about speed."