Well, it was the first question Bob Schieffer asked, so the 75-year-old CBS News man doesn’t need to retire just yet. (How each candidate answered the question is another matter).

Unlike the first two presidential debates the moderator this time didn’t make news. Schieffer did what a moderator is supposed to do: ask the question and get out of the way.

During FNC’s post-debate coverage Brit Hume‘s first thought went to Schieffer: “I thought Bob Schieffer did a good job in the same way Jim Lehrer did which was by keeping a light hand in letting the candidates go at it as much as possible.”

Tom Brokaw, who moderated the Town Hall in 2008, says this format — the candidates side by side at a table — is a better way to run a debate. “That’s what I like to see is the moderator sitting across the table from them within reach, both physically and in terms of tone,” said Brokaw during NBC’s coverage.

As for fairness, the time each candidate got couldn’t be much closer. According to CNN’s onscreen tally: of 83 total minutes, Pres. Obama was given :35 seconds more than Gov. Romney.

• Related: From Twitter: Total volume during the debate: 6.5 million Tweets. Peak moment: 105,767 Tweets Per Minute – 9:45pmET – Obama: “We also have fewer horses and bayonets”

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“What happens next? Where does this go?” Schieffer says. “Is it better for the United States that we have an iron fisted dictator that’s friendly to the U.S. or a government in turmoil where we don’t know who they’re loyal to? There is also the rise of China and how do we manage that. These are things that may be more important than Mitt Romney’s income taxes when you get right down to it.”

Elsewhere, Politico writes that Schieffer and fellow debate moderator Jim Lehrer are buddies… and have somewhat embarrassing hobbies:
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Both Fox News and ABC News got the same idea, and put together montages of Crowley trying to bring order to the auditorium.

WATCH:

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More than 10 million people watched Kelly and Baier’s coverage of the Vice Presidential debate last Thursday, putting Fox News ahead of its competitors: cable and broadcast.

“It’s amazing to me,” Kelly told TVNewser Monday as we stopped by the set of her “America Live” program.

“FNC has been such a powerhouse for a long time, but it’s still a cable news operation, and people have to pay for cable, and not everybody has it. So whenever we beat the nets, that’s a big deal. That gets all of our attention.”

From her perch at the Fox News anchor desk, Kelly has had a front-row seat to the first two debates. She is quick to defend Jim Lehrer, who was widely criticized for his handling of the first Presidential debate, saying he did “exactly what a moderator should do, which is get out of the way.”

Kelly said the campaigns and the media “are not aligned in their missions when it comes to the debates,” noting the early criticism of tonight’s moderator, CNN anchor Candy Crowley, came from the campaigns’ concern that she might ask follow-up questions of the candidates.

“Let’s not start criticizing the moderator before she’s moderated! Let’s give the woman a break and let her do her job and let’s see how she does it,” Kelly said. “If she tries to make the debate all about her, and insert a bunch of Candy Crowley questions, instead of the town hall questions, that won’t be

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“I don’t know what it was, but it was amazing. The lost language of journalism being spoken on modern television, watching her moderate that debate with, oh my God, editorial authority. Its like going to Amish country and seeing them making beautiful chairs by hand. You’re like I thought this craft had been completely forgotten.”

Of course, he was on more familiar ground when he also took the cable news analysis of the debate to task.

WATCH:

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With the format a Town Hall Meeting at Hofstra, the candidates are less likely to ignore the moderator and make speeches, as they did with PBS’s beleaguered Jim Lehrer in the first debate, Crowley says.

“When you’re dealing directly with voters, you’re less likely to go on and on,” says Crowley, ‘State of the Union’ anchor and the first woman to moderate a presidential debate in 20 years. “There’s a different dynamic to it. Folks want to get a chance to talk to the guys.”

In a traditional debate format, “the president and Romney are quite happy to roll over the media,” Crowley, 63, says. “There’s no price to be paid for that.”

Lehrer was blasted from all corners for having been too passive. Crowley says he did exactly what he was supposed to do under the new debate format – allow the candidates to talk directly to each other in wide-open, 15-minute segments.

Getting the candidates to engage is not always easy, however, as Lehrer discovered. For most of the debate, Obama seemed like he was having an out-of-body experience.

“As much as Jim tried to have the men engage with each other, the bottom line is that the president didn’t want to engage with Romney,” says Crowley. “The president’s campaign said he wanted to talk to the American people directly. It appears he went in with the wrong strategy. Mitt was ready to rock and roll.”

On the other hand, if candidates become too engaged, “they look mean,” Crowley says. “They don’t

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Whatever it was, Jon Stewart’s and Bill O’Reilly’s ‘Rumble in the Air-Conditioned Auditorium’ Saturday night was a lot more fun to watch than was last week’s presidential debate.

In fact, President Obama and Mitt Romney would do well to consider bringing in Stewart and O’Reilly to prep the candidates for their next showdown, Oct. 16 at Hofstra. They could do a lot worse, and probably have.

Held at George Washington University’s sold-out Lisner Auditorium and streamed live online for $4.95, ‘Rumble’ featured equal parts polemics and poppycock about the country’s most pressing political issues. Lincoln-Douglas, it was not.

Both hosts were outside their natural habitats. O’Reilly is no standup comedian, and Stewart can bray when he overplays the righteous indignation card. Also, the two were used to going mano a mano in short segments on each other’s shows, but this event was 90 minutes. Untelevised minutes, to boot.

Still, as befits their unlikely bromance, the Lilliputian Stewart – he’s 5-foot-7 – and 6-foot-4 O’Reilly were obviously enjoying themselves at the sparring session. It wasn’t as funny as ‘The Daily Show’ or as fiery as ‘The Factor.’ It wasn’t even a rumble. But it had its moments.

Raising and lowering himself on an electric riser behind the podium, Stewart began his opening remarks with: “My friend Bill O’Reilly is completely full of shit.” He riffed about Fox

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Chris Parnell was back as Jim Lehrer in another sketch about the debate itself (after the jump).

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The Gregory Brothers did their thing, and autotuned the debate:

The debate gets the Taiwanese animation treatment:
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PBS’s Lehrer today insisted that he’s unfazed by the avalanche of vitriolic responses to his moderator performance at Wednesday’s presidential debate, seen by an estimated 67 million Americans.

In Lehrer’s 12th presidential at-bat, critics blasted him for being too passive, allowing President Obama and Mitt Romney to steamroll him at will. Critics also said Lehrer’s questions were vague, and that they didn’t cover a broad enough range of issues.

“Everybody is welcome to criticize my questions, or anything else I did,” Lehrer, 78, says. “I have no problem with that. I knew, going in, this was not going to be easy. What the hell. … The next debate, people will tweet, tweet, tweet all over again. That’s terrific.”

Despite being constantly interrupted and talked over, Lehrer pronounced the new debate format — featuring 15-minute, wide-open segments for the candidates to directly address each other – a success.

“The format worked,” he says. “These guys were really talking to each other. Presidential candidates had never done that before. People, including the candidates, and including me, were used to a more controlled format, with two-minute answers.

“I played a different role than in the past. I was still the moderator, but it was a different kind of debate. I understand why people were a little stunned by some it. Over time, they’ll get used to it, and realize it works.”

The downside of the open format, Lehrer acknowledges, is that it’s virtually impossible to steer the candidates in a different direction or to get them to shut up.

“I would hope the candidates themselves would do that,” says Lehrer, ever the optimist. “Certainly,

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“I am happy that Jim Lehrer was willing to ask us our positions on issues, and we could describe those so it was not a big ‘gotcha’ night from the moderator,” Romney told Sean Hannity.

WATCH:

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Update: Nielsen now says that 67.2 million people watched the debates on the rated TV networks, the most for the first debate since 1980.  That number does not include viewers watching online, or on unrated networks like C-SPAN.

In the latest debate ratings, ABC was the most-watched network during the debate, followed by NBC and CBS, with Fox News Channel fourth.

9-10:30 PM Debate:

ABC: 11.25 million total viewers

NBC: 11.07 million total viewers

CBS: 10.58 million total viewers

Fox: 6.89 million total viewers

10:30-11 PM Post-debate:

ABC: 8.86 million total viewers

NBC: 8.72 million total viewers

CBS: 7.01 million total viewers

You can see the cable debate ratings here.

2.6 million viewers watched the debate on Univision, and 248,000 on Telemundo.

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“I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I’m going to stop other things. I like PBS. I love Big Bird. I actually like you, too. But I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for it.”

PBS CEO Paula Kerger appeared on CNN this morning, where she responded to the comment, saying that it “was not about the budget, this has to be about politics.”

“With the enormous problems facing the country, the fact that we are the focus is unbelievable to me,” Kerger said. “We are America’s biggest classroom, we touch children across the country in every home.”

WATCH:

Kerger dodged questions about Jim Lehrer‘s debate performance.

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NowThis News put together a supercut:

The Washington Post‘s Erik Wemple argues that it wasn’t Lehrer’s fault, he just had a thankless task:

Lehrer’s real problem was that, for one night, he had to play stand-in for the entire American media. And if there’s one thing the American public enjoys, it’s bashing the American media, no matter how it performs.

The AP’s David Bauder rounds up many of the critiques on social media:

The tough assessments crossed party lines: Republican commentator Laura Ingraham wrote on Twitter that Lehrer seemed “a bit overwhelmed.” Comic and Democratic activist Bill Maher bluntly tweeted that “Lehrer sucked.”

The Nation‘s Richard Kim pulled no punches:
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Moderator Jim Lehrer got pummeled on social media for not being a moderator and Big Bird might get fired.

Following the debate, however, things got interesting on MSNBC. The hosts pretty much agreed with the consensus that a fired up Mitt Romney triumphed over a laid back President Obama. That was most evident when Rachel Maddow listed a few of the issues that didn’t come up during the debate — which are discussed nightly on MSNBC. “No discussion of the 47%, no discussion of union rights, no discussion of women’s rights, Bain, abortion, Romney’s jobs record in Massachusetts,” said Maddow who then brought in Chris Matthews live in Denver.

Matthews effectively said if you’re an MSNBC viewer/Obama supporter you’re going to bed unmoved. “This wasn’t an MSNBC debate,” said Matthews. Which essentially means that MSNBC debates the issues that are central to defeating Mitt Romney and sending Pres. Obama back to the White House.

“It had none of the things you mentioned,” said Matthews, now really getting fired up. “It didn’t mention all of the key fighting points of this campaign. I don’t know what he was doing out there. He had his head down. He was enduring the debate instead of fighting it.”

“I know he says he doesn’t like to watch cable television, but maybe he should start.”

“Where was Obama tonight?! There’s a hot debate going on in this county and you know where it’s going on? Here on this network. We have our knives out,” Matthews concluded.

Of course, MSNBC’s knives cut only one way. But as far as TV goes — not news in the traditional, without bias sense — that’s called strategy. And it draws ratings, which helps sell ads, which brings in revenue — without a government subsidy. And that’s something even Big Bird can appreciate.

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