BBC website provides a superb resource for students of the TV debates

I'd strongly recommend fellow anoraks and/or anyone interested in taking a detailed look at the third and final TV debate, to visit to one of the most useful resources I've yet seen - posted HERE on the BBC website.

Key moments in text and video not only combines a transcript with the video of the whole debate, but you can click on any part of the transcript and be taken straight to the video sequence to which it relates.

If this kind of technology had been available back in the 1980s when I started work on Our Masters' Voices (for which I had to tape and transcribe all the excerpts myself) I reckon I could have written the book in at least a tenth of the time that it actually took.

This resource would be even better if you could copy segments from the video, but I've yet to work out how to do that. If you know the secret, please let me know.

The Art of the Public Address

Given the BBC's shift away from playing anything much from political speeches on its main news programmes (for more on which see links below), I'm wondering whether it was deliberate irony on the part of Radio 4's schedulers t0 broadcast a light-hearted investigation into The Art of the Public Address by Laurie Taylor - today, with less than a week to go before polling day.

I knew the programme was in the pipeline, as I make a brief appearance in it as a 'straight man' to Arthur Smith's comedy lines. And I confess to being mildly disappointed that my favourite PA announcement didn't survive the editor's cut. It came on the platform of Bath Spa station on a very rainy day, when those of us 'alighting' from the train were told:

"First Great Western apologises for delays to West-bound trains, which are being caused by a herd of goats sheltering in the Severn tunnel."

But I was very pleased to have made a more positive contribution as an amateur talent scout. On my way home after being interviewed by Laurie, I came across Scott, a particularly impressive PA announcer on the platform of a London Tube station, persuaded him to give me his phone number and emailed it to the producer - my debut as a casting consultant, and Scott's debut on BBC Radio 4.

Related posts on UK media coverage (or lack of it) of speeches

Cutaways as the nearest thing to applause in the TV debates

Well, much to my surprise, the audiences at the three TV debates succeeded in conforming to the ban on applause, as specified in rule of engagement No. 40, for four and a half hours.

Signs of agreement
But there were a few isolated sequences that enabled the millions of viewers at home to see someone in the audience showing approval and/or agreement with something said by one of the speakers. And, in the absence of applause, this was the closest we got to seeing any positive reactions to what one or other of the leaders was saying.

At first, I thought that the following clip might lead to the BBC being accused of breaking rule of engagement No. 71: There will be no close-up cutaways of a single individual audience member while the leaders are speaking.

But then I realised that, by restating a general question ("Who would have thought...") into one aimed directly at the woman who had asked the question ("When you lent that money to the banks, did you think...), Nick Clegg had liberated the BBC editors to cut away to the questioner - under rule of enagement No. 72: However if one of the leaders directly addresses an individual audience member, a close-up shot of that individual can be shown e.g. if a leader answers a question by directly addressing the questioner.

This meant they could show the questioner shaking her head and anticipating Mr Clegg's own answer ("No) before he got there. But, whereas such individual displays of agreement with a rhetorical question are more usually the precursor to a collective one (i.e. a burst of applause), as can be clearly seen HERE, this one, thanks to rule 40, did not.

What particularly impressed me was how alert to the rules the BBC live picture editor must have been to see the opportunity provided by rule 72 quickly enough to be able to cut away within a mere four seconds of Clegg starting to speak directly to the questioner. How many of the viewers at home, I wonder, were listening quite as closely as that to the debate?