CNN-YouTube presidential debates

The CNN/YouTube presidential debates were a series of televised debates in which United States presidential hopefuls field questions submitted through the video sharing site YouTube. The Democratic Party installment took place in Charleston, South Carolina and aired on July 23, 2007. The Republican Party installment took place in St. Petersburg, Florida and aired on November 28, 2007.

The CNN/YouTube Debates were conceived of by David Bohrman, the Washington Bureau Chief of CNN, and Steve Grove, the Head of News and Politics at YouTube. YouTube was a new platform on the political scene, rising to prominence in the 2006 midterm elections after Senator George Allen's Macaca Controversy, in which the Senator was captured calling his opponent Jim Webb's campaign worker a "Macaca" on video, which went viral on YouTube and damaged a campaign that narrowly lost at the polls. Media companies were looking for new ways to harness the possibilities of web video and YouTube was looking for opportunities to give its users access to the national political stage, so Bohrman and Grove formed a unique partnership in the CNN/YouTube Debates. It was the first-ever web-to-television debate partnership.

A man named Chris from Portland introduced the debate in a YouTube video. He challenged the candidates (Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Mike Gravel, Chris Dodd, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson and John Edwards) to "actually answer the questions" instead of "beating around the bush." Moderator, Anderson Cooper, stepped in and discussed why many of the video questions were not selected, even showing the most popular video, made by YouTube celebrity Tony Huynh, better known as TheWineKone. After that, more video questions were shown and the candidates answered them.

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