Fey's Palin, Russert's death altered coverage ... and results

The long national nightmare we call a presidential campaign is at last over.

Looking back on the campaign, I find to no one's surprise that the TV coverage had a dramatic effect on the race. It always does. Yet, to my way of thinking, two things stand out: Tina Fey's spot-on impersonation of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on NBC's "Saturday Night Live," and the death of NBC political reporter Tim Russert.

Fey's Palin reduced her to a laughingstock for most of the electorate, and it undercut much of the momentum Sen. John McCain had coming out of the Republican Convention in St. Paul, Minn. It was the single most damaging political lampoon since Chevy Chase's bumbling Gerald Ford back in the formative days of "SNL." It was not political assassination, however. What was most damning was that oftentimes Fey was simply reciting Palin's exact words from news interviews or the vice-presidential debate.

Bill Maher on his HBO talk show "Real Time" might have been the first to insist that Palin wasn't qualified to be president, or even vice president. Yet it was Fey's Palin - and Palin herself - who made her actually seem unqualified.

By contrast, Fred Armisen's lame imitation of Sen. Barack Obama on "SNL" only bolstered the popular perception that Obama was made of Teflon where comic lampoons were concerned. I'm sure over the next four years comedians will discover how to make fun of him (most likely they'll have eight years to get it right) but Armisen wasn't it. As for Darrell Hammond's McCain, he was more suave and composed than the actual candidate.

For all his qualifications, McCain was stiff and squirrelly on camera. Put him onstage next to Obama, and the choice was as clear as it was between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy in 1960. As it turned out, it was even more so.

Of course, it didn't hurt Obama that the economy tanked right on cue, taking McCain down when he got entangled in failed Republican policies. Yet one other thing changed the tenor of the coverage earlier on and throughout the campaign, and that was Russert's death.

Russert was the happy warrior of political reporters. He was playful, yet serious, jolly, yet sincere, respected at both ends of the political spectrum. His death had an immediate effect on his colleagues, most of all on Chris Matthews. In Russert's wake, Matthews toned down his bulldog act (remember when he suggested during the primaries that Hillary Clinton was a senator only because of a sympathy vote as a disgraced wife?) and moved to a more moderate and downright cheery position in the center.

Now, I don't have anything more than my own impressions to base things on, but I think many political reporters attempted to do their jobs better and more responsibly after Russert. They certainly did a better job covering this campaign - and unveiling the lies on both sides - than they had in the past. They were more determined not to be used by the political parties by falling victim to their own objectivity. For that reason, neither Bill Ayers nor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright ever became another full-fledged Willie Horton. If anything, President Bush was McCain's Willie Horton in this campaign, but then again every election, even ones not involving incumbents, is in some way a vote of confidence on the status quo.

Russert, however, had nothing to do with MSNBC's move to the left, which was already well under way when he died. That was more based on a simple corporate strategy to place the NBC cable news outlet in opposition to the Fox News Channel, to claim viewers turned off by FNC's right-wing slant and CNN's stodgy objectivity. Yet that too influenced the coverage - in a huge way. FNC continues to draw better ratings than MSNBC, but MSNBC's ratings are up, and there's no denying Keith Olbermann and later Rachel Maddow gave liberals a rallying point they hadn't had before on TV.

One last thing: The major broadcast networks still haven't discovered how to cover the modern-day pep rally known as a national political convention. They continue to be twitterpated by the pageantry, even as they pooh-pooh protests as so much propaganda.

There were nasty rallies and conflicts in St. Paul, where police deployed intimidation tactics against both protesters and the media, yet they were given little coverage, and I'm sure much the same went on with the Democrats in Denver. That's one more thing the broadcast networks and their cable news siblings can work on over the next four years, as well as the timeless struggle to cover the presidential campaign as something more than a horse race. But wait, I think I hear the first polls already being conducted on the 2012 election.

Remotely interesting: Speaking of HBO's "Real Time" host Bill Maher, he'll appear on the Sundance Channel's "Iconoclasts" program at 9 p.m. today in the unlikely pairing with music executive Clive Davis.

WGN Channel 9 anchor Allison Payne is taking some additional time off as she continues to recover from a series of mini strokes she suffered earlier this year. Micah Materre will fill in for her on the 9 p.m. newscast. Viewers can send get-well wishes to Payne through a message board at the wgntv.com Web site. ... WMAQ Channel 5 anchor Warner Saunders will cut back to just the 10 p.m. newscast with the new year on his way to retiring midway through 2009. ... NBC has ordered a full season for "Knight Rider" and "Kath & Kim." Go figure. ... A&E will renew Benjamin Bratt in "The Cleaner" for another season. ... CBS unfortunately has canceled "The Ex List."

End of the dial: Adult-contemporary WAIT 93.9-FM is bringing back the syndicated radio show of Delilah from 7 p.m. to midnight. ... Morning co-host Gary Castaldo is leaving 105.5-FM.

Angela Ingram, vice president of communications of Clear Channel Radio Chicago, has been elected president of the Chicago Chapter of the American Women in Radio and Television.

Sarah and the Tall Boys play live in the studio on "Hambone's Blues Party" at 10 p.m. today on WDCB 90.9-FM.