ITV's Sunak v Starmer debate under fire from viewers as ratings revealed
ITV was criticised for the debate's quick-fire format.
As the 2024 General Election campaign continues ahead of the vote on Thursday 4th July, ITV has aired the first live, televised debate between Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader Rishi Sunak and Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer.
The debate, titled Sunak v Starmer: The ITV Debate and moderated by Julie Etchingham, aired on Tuesday 4th June at 9pm and took place for 70 minutes, followed by interviews with leaders of some of the other major parties, presented by Anushka Asthana.
While the debate saw strong viewing figures, with a peak audience of 5.5 million viewers and an average of 5m viewers tuning in, it attracted some backlash from viewers, who took to X to complain about the format.
Many of the complaints surrounded the brevity of the response time allocated, with only 45 seconds allowed for initial responses to each of the questions.
Host of The News Agents podcast Jon Sopel posted: "I have to say a well constructed thirty minute head to head interview with Starmer and then another with Sunak would yield far more than this constrained but shouty debate."
Media psychologist Jo Hemmings said in a post: "This is so messy. Terrible format for a debate. Too many questions, too little time to answer them. These ridiculous timing rules have reduced two senior politicians to a schoolboy scrap, and a first class presenter to an out of control teacher."
Meanwhile, LBC Duty Editor Tom Hourigan said: "Lots of justified chat about how the format of last night’s #ITVDebate was poor. We’d be better following the French model where balance of speaking time is measured across the *whole* debate so conversation’s more free-wheeling and not arbitrarily shut down after 45 seconds."
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Former Doctor Who writer Vinay Patel wrote: "A debate format that only allows you to deliver less information than a tweet feels… inherently useless at best and actively harmful to political engagement at worst?"
Commentator and rapper Darren McGarvey, also known as Loki, said in a post: "This debate is so frustrating due to the way the format constrains the flow of discussion. Why try and condense so much into so little time[?]
"People want a serious exchange of ideas between politicians not some gameshow format full of gimmicks. Most of the debate is just the host trying to control the natural rabble that arises from the format ITV has imposed."
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Despite the format criticisms, many viewers praised Etchingham's moderation, with TV producer Simon Proctor posting: "@julie_etch is always excellent and a perfect choice for this #ITVDebate."
Another viewer added of Etchingham: "She was an excellent host - firm and fair facilitator. @julie_etch won."
ITV has also announced a second, multi-party debate, which will be held on Thursday 13th June at 8:30pm and will feature leaders or representatives from seven political parties.
Meanwhile, the BBC will host a multi-party debate at 7:30pm on Friday 7th June, a Question Time programme featuring the leaders of the country's four biggest political parties on Thursday 20th June, and another head-to-head between Starmer and Sunak on Wednesday 26th June.
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