That was the position that political junkies found themselves in on Wednesday as CNN prepared to televise the 20th Republican presidential debate of the 2012 nomination race. There are no more debates on the conveyer belt — an abrupt change for a campaign season that has been punctuated by one every nine days on average from September to the most recent debate in January. Some in the television news business deemed Wednesday’s debate a “season finale.” Charles P. Pierce of Esquire magazine suggested in a blog post that it be titled “A Very Special Episode,” a promotional line for TV shows that is now mostly a parody of the medium. “They should invite the whole cast back, all the people who left the show for their own spinoffs, the way they brought Rhoda and Phyllis back when Mary Richards got fired at WJM,” Mr. Pierce wrote, alluding to the classic sitcom “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” Ever since the very beginning, last May 5 on the Fox News Channel, candidates advanced and retreated on the basis of the Republican debates; so, too, did television channels and moderators. Individual debates drew as many as 7.6 million viewers (ABC, Dec. 10), happily surprising executives who saw their networks’ reputations and finances benefit. And now, suddenly, the show’s over? Stay tuned, as they say. CNN billed the Wednesday debate in Mesa, Ariz., as the final meeting of the four remaining candidates before the voting on March 6, Super Tuesday. There was to have been another on March 1, but last week Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Representative Ron Paul declined CNN’s invitation. Television news executives have expressed optimism that if the Republican campaign lacks an unassailable front-runner after Super Tuesday, some of the remaining candidates will accept new invitations to debates. “Front-runners are the ones who, typically, look at debates as events that pose more risk than reward,” Sam Feist, the Washington bureau chief for CNN, said in a telephone call from Mesa. Chuck Todd, the political director for NBC News, said he suspected that “we’re going to go back to a more realistic debate schedule of one every month-ish.” NBC, he said, is planning “at least one” more debate, though it has not yet proposed that to the Republican campaigns. “There’s no point in asking them now,” Mr. Todd said. “They’re not going to make a decision until they absolutely have to.” NBC’s debate in Florida on Jan. 23 attracted 7.1 million viewers, the second-highest total since May. But, broadly speaking, the ratings for the debates did not climb a lot over time; CNN’s most recent debate, on Jan. 26, drew 100,000 fewer viewers than a debate it co-hosted in October, months before any caucuses or primaries had been held. Perhaps political devotees were tuning in each time, but casual viewers were not — a suggestion made by some executives and backed up by polls that show relatively low levels of interest in the campaign among most Americans. That was the punch line, at least, for Jimmy Fallon last week when he told the viewers of his late-night show that CNN would let some viewers ask the candidates questions on Wednesday. “It’ll be awkward,” he said, “when they’re like, ‘This question’s from Mark in Texas.’ Mark asks: ‘What else is on?’ ”
