[cma-l] General Election Debates

[ajr.robinson at yahoo.co.uk]

I would certainly encourage anyone considering holding a debate to go for it.  Here at Warminster Community Radio we were very delighted that our election debate in 2015 won a gold award.

Our format was to invite all five candidates for our South West Wiltshire constituency on to the stage at the local Civic Centre in front of a live audience.  It was on a Saturday morning from 10.30 until noon.  On entry, members of the audience were able to suggest questions they would like to ask and then my production team selected those that would be asked based on covering a broad range of subjects.  These audience led questions were supplemented by questions that had been emailed in by our listeners in the week leading up to the debate and my own questions that I inserted.

At the end of the debate, each candidate had two minutes to put their case to be South West Wiltshire's next MP.  The positions that they sat on stage and the order they spoke at the end was drawn randomly before the start of the debate.

Regarding tickets, these were available for residents to collect from the venue in advance of the event.  No one was permitted entry on the door without a ticket.  Our formidable Director Barry Mole made clear to the audience that while applause was acceptable during the debate, heckling would not be tolerated.  One member of the audience did not like this and he was removed from the event.  I think the thing that made me most happy on the day as debate moderator was that each candidate left feeling I had given them a fair and equal chance to put their case to the electorate.

If anyone would like any further information about how we did it (which I'm not saying is necessarily how everyone else has to do it), do get in touch with us at Warminster.

Andrew Robinson
Station Manager, WCR

Sent from my iPad