• In the early years of the United States, presidential candidates considered it unseemly to campaign, let alone debate with their opponents.

The first presidential debates required an act of Congress

The Communications Act of 1934 required US broadcasters to offer all candidates for public office, not just those from the major parties, equal air time.

To legally allow the 1960 presidential debates to be limited to just Kennedy and Nixon, Congress temporarily suspended that provision of the law.

A 1975 revision by the Federal Communications Commission allowed presidential debates between major party candidates to be held without special acts of Congress.

During a debate, the candidates remained silent for almost half an hour

With just nine minutes remaining in the first debate between President Gerald Ford and Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter on September 23, 1976, the audio suddenly failed.

On ABC, host Harry Reasoner assured viewers that the technical difficulties “were not a conspiracy against Governor Carter or President Ford.”

For 27 minutes, as the nation watched and audio engineers scrambled, the two candidates seemed frozen in place as they stood rigid in silence behind their podiums.

The 1980 Carter-Reagan presidential debate was the most watched in history.
According to Nielsen Media Research, 80.6 million Americans tuned in on October 28, 1980, to watch the Carter-Reagan debate.

This was followed by the 69.9 million who watched the second debate between President George HW Bush, Democratic candidate Bill Clinton and Reform Party candidate Ross Perot in 1992, the first town hall-style debate.

By comparison, the highest-rated presidential debate between Democratic candidate Barack Obama and Republican candidate John McCain in 2008 drew 63 million viewers, which was easily dwarfed by the nearly 70 million who saw their vice presidential picks Joe Biden and Sarah Palin.

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