Host Loses Debate
There really is no good answer to the question posed by Cleveland's "muckraker" Roldo Bartimole:
Cleveland State University, a college of working class and middle class students, had to raise $300,000 to help put on the Democratic debate last week at the Wolstein Center.Why?
Debate sponsors NBC-TV, its affiliate here WKYC, and its cable network MSNBC are all profit making entities. They all enjoy government-anointed, semi-monopolies using the public air waves. They are being fed by millions and millions of dollars of election advertising. Yet CSU had to go take $300,000 out of this community to host the event. I don't understand why the profit-makers didn't pay their own way.
The Cleveland debate drew 7.78 million voters, a historic best for MSNBC, according to Nielsen Media Research.
So shouldn't NBC pay CSU, rather than the other way around?
Not much of a debate at all here. Cleveland State might muster the argument that they benefit from the prestige of having hosted. They had better be able to prove that $300,000 could not have earned a better return had it been spent on other forms of recruiting or fundraising.
We know MSNBC got a huge return on their investment.
