The ABA is offering every Arizona radio and TV station the opportunity to live simulcast election debates in October for Arizona’s open US Senate seat. 

A partnership like this has never been created before! Our goal is to use the collective reach of Arizona radio and TV to showcase local media as the most trusted source for local news. Road-blocking these debates across so many stations in Arizona has real power for public engagement. 

DATES AND BIG PICTURE:
The ABA has been working with Arizona Clean Elections to build this first-of-its-kind partnership. The shared debate will take place as follows:

US Senate Election Debate: Thurs, Oct 6, 6:00:00p – 6:56:46p (commercial free)

The debate will be live simulcast in English and Spanish and offered to all Arizona local radio and TV stations. For Spanish audio, we will supply live narrators on an alternate audio channel. 

LOCATION AND FEEDS:
ASU’s Cronkite School/Arizona PBS will serve as the neutral host location.

The ABA plans to provide a clean satellite feed of the debates for TV stations and a clean audio feed for radio stations. On the TV side, the feed will be fully self contained/switched, but without any bugs or lower thirds to give each of you the opportunity to own the branding.

The only branding will come when ASU’s Cronkite School/Arizona PBS is identified as the host location partner in scripted remarks and with a logo alongside Arizona Clean Elections behind the candidate podiums. No other branding will be visually or audibly present.

FORMAT AND MODERATORS
The debate will follow standard formal debate rules. Candidates will stand at podiums and receive set amounts of time to talk about specific topics. Those topics will be chosen in advance by the single moderator of the debate, Ted Simons from Arizona PBS.

MEDIA AND PUBLIC QUESTIONS:
All participating stations will have the opportunity to solicit questions from their audience and get them in front of the debate moderator for potential inclusion. In addition, all media partners can submit newsroom questions that they would like the debate moderator to consider. The ABA wants to ensure that the topics represent the collective asks from media partners and the public.

Please review this debate offering with your teams and reply back if you would like to be included in the live simulcast. We are hoping to have high participation to show the unique role that Arizona’s local radio and TV stations can play for critical events like these debates. My email address is chris@azbroadcasters.org.