Political Prime Time on the Broadcast Nets

With TVNewser focused almost exclusively on the cable networks during last night’s five-hour live blog, how did the broadcast networks handle the results and speeches?

Sens. John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama all gave speeches and both of the final primary states were called between 8:30-10:30pmET, and the networks handled the coverage in different ways.

ABC gave the longest special report of the night, cutting in at 10:08pmET and taking the Obama speech live until 10:31pmET. Charlie Gibson anchored and was joined by George Stephanopoulos. The report also included clips from McCain and Clinton’s speeches.

Katie Couric anchored a network update, with Jeff Greenfield, at 9:02pmET, announcing Obama had enough delegates for the nomination. At 8:15pmPT, CBS broke in with an update for the West Coast only, with clips from Clinton and Obama’s speeches.

NBC cut in at 9:00pmET, with Brian Williams and Tim Russert declaring Obama as the “presumptive nominee.” At 10pmET, NBC again cut in, with an update as Williams read quotes from McCain and Clinton’s speeches.

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