Dingell's Delay Plea Has No 'Net Effect

Right on schedule, House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell yesterday asked the broadcast and cable news networks not to call the presidential election next Tuesday night until 10 p.m. ET when all the polls out West are closed.

"[M]any, myself included, believe that when television stations call elections based on the results in a few eastern states, voter turnout elsewhere in the nation could potentially be lower than it would otherwise have been," Dingell says in an open letter to NBCU's Jeff Zucker, CBS's Leslie Moonves, Disney-ABC's Anne Sweeney, News Corp.'s Peter Chernin, CNN's Jim Walton, Fox News' Roger Ailes and MSNBC's Phil Griffin.

"This potentially affects not only the results of the presidential election, but also could have a dramatic impact on other contests for elected office," Dingell says.

This has been a running battle between lawmakers and the networks for decades.

Dingell makes a valid point. Calling the race after the polls in the Eastern and Central time zones close could suppress turnout in the West.

But the networks have rightly countered that they are not going to sit on the news of who the next president will be for the sake of state and local elections in California.

So they will likely ignore Dingell's request as they have similar ones in the past, although after the 2000 election-night debacle they did agree not to call any state until all the polls within it have close.

But that is all beside the point I want to make today, which is:

Big John is in a position to influence just about every law or regulation affecting broadcasting and cable, yet he is still apparently unaware that the TV networks no longer control the flow of information on election night.

It may have once been true. Somewhere during the last half century, the TV networks replaced newspapers as the unofficial tabulators of electoral votes and declarers of presidential winners. And everybody awaited the word of Cronkite, Rather, Jennings and Brokaw.

But then along came the Internet, creating a new media world, one that Dingell hasn't quite discovered yet.

This year, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC will not be alone in following the voting and coloring in the electoral maps. Hundreds (thousands?) of Web sites, many belonging to newspapers and TV stations, will be doing the same.

Keep an eye on the Associated Press.

It is the sole source of vote counts for all media in the U.S., it will have access to the same exit polling as the networks and it has expert analysts and editors who know how to read the data.

In other words, it is every bit as qualified and eager to call the race as any of the TV networks.

And when it does, the news will rocket around the Internet. The entire world will know within minutes.

Internet Broadcasting announced this morning that it will be delivering the AP vote counts and reports to at least 58 of its client sites. Even though the sites are operated by network affiliates, I wouldn't expect them to wait around for the networks when the AP makes a call.

The point is, if the networks actually listened to Dingell and held off until 10 p.m., they could be the last outlets in the country with the news. CBS could get beat by imjustcrazyaboutobama.com and palinpower.com.

Dingell, naturally, singles out the TV networks because he has considerable influence with them.

But his letter indicates that he really hasn't caught up with the facts that the Internet has, indeed, changed everything, at least in media, and that the TV networks are no longer all-powerful.

AP has the same information, and the Internet can circulate it with equal speed.

"Most Americans will turn to television newscasts for the most up-to-date information regarding the election and results," Dingell says in his letter.

True enough, but most Americans will also be keeping an eye on their favorite Web sites for the latest word on their favorite candidate.

The world is no longer waiting for TV.