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Aug 29 2008 11:19AM EDT

Convention Scorecard: CNN Did It Best

With their personal animosities on full display, MSNBC's talking heads put on an entertaining show in Denver, but if it was the convention action itself that interested you, CNN was the network to watch.

"Of the three cable news networks, CNN was the least intrusive: Wolf Blitzer and his colleagues were willing to let speakers speak for themselves," writes Alessandra Stanley in The New York Times. (Perhaps Blitzer learned a lesson after being called the "most intrusive and self-aggrandizing" of all debate moderators by James Fallows in The Atlantic.)

This less-is-more approach paid off, says Stanley. "For most of the convention, CNN -- staid, stable and anchored by fewer egomaniacs -- won higher ratings than the other cable news channels, as well as ABC and CBS. And Wednesday, CNN was neck and neck with NBC, and for a while even ahead, suggesting that when a political event is this interesting, television commentators are less so."

NPR's David Folkenflik agrees, calling the imperative to offer less commentary during a historic event "the McEnroe rule," after tennis analyst John McEnroe. CNN honored the McEnroe rule at the moment of Barack Obama's nomination, says Folkenflik, while NBC and Fox News gilded the lily with inane observations.

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