Impeachment Trial: CBS Blinks First

After less than three hours of live coverage CBS, the network of Walter Cronkite cut away from the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump, yielding to daytime fare like “Dr. Phil” and “Judge Judy.”

NBC held out longer, but by 5 p.m., ABC was the last traditional broadcast network still in breaking-news mode. Die-hards could turn to cable news for their fix.

In television terms, the opening hours of Mr. Trump’s trial — only the third in American history, and the second of the mass-media era — did not exactly make for visually compelling viewing. For Republican Senate leadership, that was by design.

Senate officials rejected repeated requests to allow outside cameras into the chamber to record the trial — meaning that what viewers see and hear will be dictated by cameras and microphones controlled by Senate staff members, rather than an independent news organization. (Even C-SPAN was not allowed access.)

The result: Audiences were introduced on Tuesday to the constricted, lo-fi view of the Senate floor that will be ubiquitous on the nation’s TV screens in the coming days.

On Tuesday, the small-screen vista was limited to artless shots of House impeachment managers and Mr. Trump’s lawyers at their lecterns, with an occasional overhead glimpse of the chamber thrown in.

MSNBC, whose prime-time opinion shows are a gathering space for liberals, acknowledged the restricted views with some subtle trolling. Attentive viewers might have noticed a graphic in the upper-left corner of the MSNBC screen, noting that the trial footage was provided by “Capitol Hill Senate TV”: the government, not a news outlet.

CBS gave national affiliates the option of picking up a feed of the trial from CBSN, its streaming-only news channel, after 3 p.m. Its Washington-based evening newscast opened with an extended segment on the trial, with the anchor Norah O’Donnell interviewing four of the House impeachment managers.