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🇺🇸 CNN’s Special Events team is staying busy this January with debates and town halls as the election year kicks off

CNN’s robust special events and programming team is making it all happen behind the scenes. 

As the 2024 election year officially begins, CNN will host a variety of Republican Presidential Primary Town Halls and Debates in Iowa and New Hampshire as voters decide who they want to send to the White House in an ever-shrinking field. 
 
Starting on January 4th, just eleven days before Iowa caucus goers become the first to officially weigh in on the Republican primary race, CNN will host back-to-back town halls featuring Republican presidential candidates Governor Ron DeSantis and former Ambassador Nikki Haley.
 
Shortly after, CNN will host two Republican presidential primary debates in Iowa on January 10th and New Hampshire on January 21st– home to the first contests that kick-off the race for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. 
 
Few people understand the glorious chaos of hosting these events from beginning to end quite like Alexa Bennewitz, Senior Director of Special Events at CNN, who has been a member of the CNN events team since 2007 and leads her first election cycle this year. We caught up with Alexa to hear about how she and her team are creating the top-tier productions CNN viewers see on their screens.

What kind of planning goes into putting on a CNN Presidential Primary Debate or Town Hall?

Planning for an event of this scale is truly a collaboration. Our planning calls regularly involve more than 300 people across CNN – I think these events touch almost every part of the company! We rely on the experts in operations, engineering, design, and editorial to transform non-traditional broadcast spaces (like a university theater or gym) into a dynamic production space.

The sets are built far in advance and have to be adaptable to a range of venues as we never know where the election cycle will take us. We took the 2020 debate set out of storage earlier this year to make sure we still had all the pieces to be ready for 2024! In order to convert these venues, we have to bring in the debate set, podiums, moderator desks, cameras, lighting, audio, production trucks and get it all setup in a few days.

Our production schedule is the guidebook that keeps us all on track and manages the delicate dance of various departments working together quickly in a small space. In the election season we are often on-site at one event working together to plan the next one.

Tell us about what happens on the day of the debate. What does your day look like start to finish?

By the time we get to debate day, there have been weeks of preparation and days of rehearsals. In the production rehearsals we try to make sure we are testing everything – the camera choreography, our technical backups, our audio plan and the candidate and moderator movements to name a few. It really feels like debate day when the last protective covering is pulled off the floor.

The early morning starts with security sweeps at both the debate hall and the Press Filing Center where the outside press who are covering the candidates and our debate work from. Depending on our luck with the weather, there could be some snow removal too! From there, everything is planned to the minute from a last round of technical rehearsals to walk throughs with the candidates, and then arrivals begin.

An early look at the debate hall goes out on a high-wide camera first thing in the morning, our political reporters will start doing live shots previewing the debate from the hall and then we have a camera position that goes live before the debate to really bring the viewer into the hall as the audience starts to arrive. Once the debate is over, we have a set built in the “spin room” for post-debate analysis and interviews with the candidates. It’s a very long but rewarding day!    

What’s the best part about working with the Special Events team to put on these political events?
We are so lucky to be able to work with the very best people at the network, everyone working on a Special Event is an expert in their role. There is also an excitement about working together on the road, especially watching those in senior roles mentor others on their first event. It’s always amazing to watch the timelapse of a debate set build to see how quickly our teams transform the spaces, no matter what we throw at them!  

Outside of town halls and debates, what other events does the Special Events team put on during an election year?  
Another fun part about working with Special Events – you never know what the year will hold, add an election year in and buckle up! The first few weeks of the year alone will include multiple town halls, two debates, the Iowa Caucus, the New Hampshire Primary and President Biden’s State of the Union address.

Working with Special Programming, the network’s coverage of July 4th has become one of our biggest productions of the year. It will be an extra lift this year as the Republican Convention in Milwaukee starts just 11 days later, followed by the Democratic Convention in Chicago in August. We are also looking ahead to the fall debates, Election Night, CNN Heroes and the 2025 Inauguration

Why are these political events so important?

CNN has a longstanding tradition of hosting town halls and debates as part of the network’s robust campaign coverage. These events are designed to provide the candidates an opportunity to hear directly from voters and for the audience at home to see how the candidates handle the pressure of taking questions on stage with their competitors. The Special Events team takes great pride in providing the technical, production, and logistics expertise that provide the candidates a platform to speak directly to the voters who will decide this incredibly important election.

Be sure to tune in to CNN’s Republican Presidential Primary Debate from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa moderated by CNN Anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash on January 10th at 9pmET, and CNN’s Republican Presidential Primary Debate from New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire on January 21st. You can watch both live on CNN, CNN International, CNN en Español and with a CNN Max subscription.

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