With a Fast and Anticipated Result, TV Analysts Shift Focus to South Carolina

Seconds before the correspondent Carl Cameron came on Fox News for a live report from Mitt Romney’s victory party in Manchester (NH) on Tuesday night, he spotted two of the candidate’s top advisers dancing to the music being piped into the room. The advisers’ euphoria, however, was not shared by conservative commentators on Fox News and other networks. While their comments were not outwardly negative, they, and many other news organizations, suggested that South Carolina would pose a more important test — implicitly urging TV and Web viewers to stay tuned.

In a sharp change from the Iowa caucus night, when Romney was not named the winner until 2:30 a.m. Eastern time, major news organizations named him the winner of the primary as soon as polls closed at 8 p.m. Eastern time. This result was expected; CNN all but said as much in a commercial early in the evening that declared, “Who comes in second may be as important as who comes in first.” But Ron Paul was identified as the second-place finisher in the 8 p.m. hour, too, deflating what little drama remained in the coverage. The results were known so early, in fact, that Fox News ended its news coverage an hour earlier than scheduled, handing the coverage over to the conservative host Sean Hannity at 10 p.m. By then, talk had already shifted to South Carolina.