The only thing America loves more than elections is television. So I tuned in

Los Angeles: There is only one thing Americans love more than America, and that is elections. Everyone and everything in America that isn’t bolted down is elected, from the town clerk, school superintendents and tax commissioner … to the president.

And the only thing America loves more than elections is television. When you put the two together, you get a circus of patriotism and stretched faces draped in red, white and blue flags, introduced by news anchors who, at times, look more like ringmasters.

US election TV coverage … kind of like a Zoom meeting.

The sheer scale of America – a population 12-fold ours, with many hundreds more television channels – means everything is inevitably bigger.

In Australia, we have the ABC and SBS, three commercial networks and Sky News pecking for the people-meter crumbs. In America, they have more news channels than we have actual channels.

Atop the pile are the apex predators of this political colosseum: CNN, with Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper, Dana Bash and Kaitlan Collins, and Fox News, with Bret Baier, Martha MacCallum and Kellyanne Conway. Between them, they dominated election eve chatter and will doubtless carve off the lion’s share of the audience.

But four years after an election night that pushed the nation to the verge of a nervous breakdown, even higher stakes this time round have left everyone with a collective knot in their stomachs.

The threatened election eve violence did not eventuate – though, it could be argued, the worst is yet to come – but there was a realisation, glimpsed in exit polling, that the electorate is frustrated, tired and angry.

The net effect was TV coverage that was initially quiet and contemplative. There was an underlying tension, largely unacknowledged. CNN and Fox News kept the mood upbeat, but neither seemed in a rush to say anything controversial.

Former Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway was among friends at Fox News.

Both were slow to call the states. Baier, in particular, probably learned his lesson after calling it quickly for Biden in 2020.

Drifting down the dial, you pass the second grades – MSNBC, the righteous home of the left; the business channel CNBC, where they were talking about the presidential race in the context of oil pricing, and sideline players such as News Nation and Bloomberg TV.

Even further down are the fringe dwellers: Newsmax, Scripps News, Blaze TV and the pro-Trump, all-flags-blazing One America News Network.

Square-jawed former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo is now hosting election coverage at News Nation.

Of everyone who was not CNN or Fox News, News Nation seemed to have the strongest traction, largely thanks to the presence of square-jawed former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo.

In many ways, election nights are to rolling TV news coverage what telethons are to live TV events: the offspring of a school reunion Zoom call and a hostage video, filled with awkwardness, occasional ice-breaking chatter and a tendency to look from side to side, wondering whether to interrupt the stilted conversation or wait quietly before sneaking out.

Fox News’ Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier.

CNN’s Jake Tapper was like the game show host of your nightmares, trapped in an episode of Family Feud – or was this more like a mad spin of the Wheel of Fortune? – on which the fate of the free world seemed to rest.

Switching over to check, Cuomo seemed relaxed, almost as though somebody had told him nobody was actually watching.

Then there was Fox’s double-header of Baier and MacCallum, who brought an awkward moderacy to the channel and its largely pro-Trump panel and audience. Like bumpkin cousins at a wedding, they were at the table, but sometimes it seemed like nobody knew what to say to them.

Fortunately, former-and-present Trump shill Kellyanne Conway was there to remind everyone that the nation’s chief Karen still had a seat at the table.

John King brought magic fingers to CNN coverage.

In that sense, the packaged election coverage you find on American television is like a highly commercialised work of art.

If you ever held a deep fear that serious politics had given way to entertainment, your fear is not misplaced. Because the television coverage of American elections, by and large, is entertainment.

And everyone wants a piece of the pie. Even The Daily Show host Jon Stewart presented rolling live coverage on Comedy Central. Because, y’know, at this point, if you haven’t realised American politics is a bit of a joke, then give us a moment, and we’ll try to get you up to speed.

On CNN, John King’s hand-waving turned touchscreen data journalism into something that is almost too sexy for traditional cable news.

Ditto Bill Hemmer, whose geeky number-crunching was infinitely more appealing (and sensible) than Fox’s battery of unmemorable and interchangeable blondes.

Back in 2020, a slow-to-reveal election result was seen as a great glitch in the machinery. After all, how can you finish the show without an 11 o’clock number?

But in 2024, as hours looked like turning into days, something more compelling emerged: an old-fashioned TV cliffhanger.

To the bitter end, as the clock chimed midnight, everything hung on a thread.

Throw in the Hans Zimmer/John Williams-style soundtrack that CNN used to over-ice its data cake, and suddenly, you realise you’re past your bedtime, and you’re still bolted to the sofa, white-knuckled and watching coverage that looks less like the Brownlow Medal count and more like the final, explosive moments of Star Wars.

Michael Idato is the culture editor-at-large of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.