‘When are we going home?’ How TV teams ran marathon election coverage

BY THE time the ABC’s election panel reached a record — and almost delirium — early on Sunday they were running on adrenaline. And they weren’t the only ones.

BY THE time the ABC’s election panel reached an election coverage record — and almost delirium — in the early hours of Sunday morning, they were running on adrenaline. And they weren’t the only ones, with 1am finishes common for all the election broadcasts.

The ABC was on air without a break for seven-and-a-half hours — without the luxury of ads to cut to like commercial free-to-air TV — so when anchor Leigh Sales let slip with her now-infamous “We’ve broken the record: suck on that, Kerry O’Brien. That’s how loose you get at 1am,” it wasn’t only light relief talking.

It was also an indication of the effects of doing a live television marathon, when the end is in sight.

Sales’ co-panellists — numbers guru Antony Green, Chris Uhlmann, Annabel Crabb, Labor’s Penny Wong and Liberal Scott Morrison — dissolved in mirth.

Throw in unexpected results after eight weeks of talking about an election, and Crabb confesses she didn’t take time for a loo break, fearing she’d miss something.

“In reality, you could have ducked out if you needed to when we were running update packages,” she said.

It was about 11pm as one of those packages aired, giving a rare chance to talk off-air, that Penny Wong looked at Crabb and said, “When are we going to go home?”

It was clear by then that while all networks had vaguely pencilled in an 11pm finish, the results had long since departed from any semblance of a script.

“There was so much stuff still happening — you have 150 seats and access to all the figures — Penny Wong and Scott Morrison were like the kids that had been given the keys to the lolly shop with access to (numbers guru) Antony Green’s figures,” Crabb said.

“It was obvious early we wouldn’t get a result, but that meant there was so much more to discuss.”

Lost it: Penny Wong and Scott Morrison dissolve into laughter in response to Sales’ ‘suck on that, Kerry’ aside. Courtesy: ABC

On live television, you’ve always got to be ready to depart from the script, and roll with the running story, despite the delirium.

It paid dividends for the ABC, which had its highest ever viewer numbers and was the most-watched coverage in the nation with 5.3 million viewers across five metropolitan cities and regional towns.

Teams behind election coverage on all networks yesterday revealed they survived the marathon broadcast — with pizza, coffee, lolly hits, limited toilet breaks and a dose of humour, combined with the thrill of a running story which departed from the predictions of most political pundits.

Crabb said Sales and the team didn’t realise how long they had been on until close to the end.

As the clock was edged towards 1am, news they’d broken Kerry O’Brien’s 2013 record for the longest election show filtered through Chris Uhlmann’s earpiece.

“I don’t think any of us realised until late how long it had gone,” Crabb said.

The mirth was a reflection of the ABC’s determination to deliver complicated information in a digestible, relaxed way.

.@CathyJacobs1 Sales brought in a banana but we ate that hours ago

— Annabel Crabb (@annabelcrabb) July 2, 2016

Throw in unexpected results after eight weeks of talking about an election, and Crabb confesses she didn’t take time for a loo break, fearing she’d miss something.

“It was obvious early we wouldn’t get a result, but that meant there was so much more to discuss,” she said.

The panel joked about hunger, Crabb tweeting at one point: “Sales brought in a banana but we ate that ages ago.”

Crabb is therefore eternally grateful to one viewer who responded to her plight late in the night, when, after Morrison had given a lengthy monologue of “campaign propaganda”, she remarked: “And I would really like a pizza.”

“A kindly viewer actually — in response — sent me a pizza. Which was very welcome when we got off the set. ABC viewers are the best,” Crabb said.

Pizza plea: Crabb was blown away by the ABC viewer who answered her pizza plea.

Meanwhile, over at Nine, political editor Laurie Oakes’ was making many tie-changes to get the better of Sportsbet. Fifty-seven punters are collectively $3010 richer after the online bookie offered a market on what colour tie he’d wear on the coverage. The wily Oakes wore all of them.

Executive producer of Nine’s election coverage, Brendan Hockings, said election teams always plan that “you might have to go past midnight” but this time around, they were expecting an earlier finish.

“We were programmed to run until 10pm in the guide but we ended up going off air at 12.45am. I think it’s officially the latest we’ve stayed on air for any election coverage,” he said.

He fielded requests during ad breaks from the team — hosted by Today’s Karl Stefanovic and Lisa Wilkinson hosting with panellists including Peter Costello and Kim Beazley — for pizza, coffee and the occasional Red Bull energy drink.

“They were definitely trying to hold on towards the end there. We were bringing over bowls of lollies towards the end for a sugar hit and they were munching away under the desk so the audio guys had to be careful to make sure the audio levels were right so you didn’t hear too much chomping in between live crosses,” he said.

“The request for pizza was the number one thing so the hosts had something to eat as soon as they got off air at close to 1am.”

Outfoxing Sportsbet: Nine’s Laurie Oakes had the last laugh with his many ties. Picture: Channel 9

“I think Karl said towards the end: ‘Why bother going off air, let’s just continue and roll right into Sunday morning’s Today show?”

Seven News political editor Mark Riley said Seven’s team, too, was running on the adrenaline of an unexpected no-result.

“We started at 5pm, we went three-and-a-half hours of continuous broadcasting without an ad break. That in itself is remarkable,” Riley said.

“Most of the time we were adlibbing. There was very little scripted content on the night because you can’t script breaking news.”

As for loo breaks, he said “a very practised bladder” and judicious sips of coffee got him through.

“Our Sydney news director was coming in with sandwiches, pizza and lollies to keep the sugar levels up. We had a floor crew of 15 in there,” Riley said.

“When we came off air at 1am, that’s almost eight hours of continuous broadcasting for Chris Reason and myself, we were all still running on adrenaline and I didn’t hear anybody say: ‘Gee, I’m tired’. I heard a lot of people say: ‘Oh my God, what a fantastic night’.”