KEY POINTS:
Small and casual was the order of the evening on TV3, while the state broadcaster delivered the extrovert's big night in for its television coverage of Election 2008.
On the couch channel-hopping, the choice was between TV3 host John Campbell's giddy whirl of superlatives for his colleagues -
he escalated to "you glorious man" for political editor Duncan Garner at his peak - and TV One's "must keep mingling" rota of commentators.
Watching the election on telly is all about surviving the barren early reaches of the evening, with reporters struggling to overcome the loneliness of loitering outside leaders' houses, or hanging about in empty venues like the gauche party guest who has turned up far too early.
Stuck outside Helen Clark's place in Mt Eden, TV3's eager beaver Tristram Clayton focused his investigative powers on delivering such details as the number of paces to nearby Eden Park. Rebecca Wright gushed over the flawlessness of the Key mansion's shrubbery. Veteran Peter Williams got the honesty prize for calling the whole scene "pretty uneventful".
You know it's election night when prime time is filled with close-ups of NZ First's snack bowls and the Greens' carrot salad, and breaking news is the arrival of the Indian takeaways at Helen's.
Both channels laid on some entertainment. TV3 turned momentarily into a B-grade special effects movie with its Bill and Ben holograms, talking to John Campbell like weird toys on his desk.
Its strained attempt at satire, Politician's Got Talent, had me hastily switching channels, where TV One had the brighter idea of sending Jeremy Wells back into his old enemy territory of Gore. "Has there been any voter intimidation?" he asked a senior citizen voter. "Only from you," the stoic Southlander replied.
TV One kept it light with a roof-top barbecue packed with opinions from the punters and hosted by Pippa Wetzell, who seemed a natural choice given that her name, said fast, sounds just like a party snack. Wetzell's do had the best comedy routine of the evening, the election as a race commentary by funny man Millen Baird.
When it came to sets, TV3's was far easier on the eye than One's curious scaffolding and eye-watering orange sofa. The reverse may be said for the graphics, with One's far more sensible and straight-forward than TV3's touch screen nonsense, whose electorate results frustratingly lacked the party vote.
TV One's busy rota of guests had some surprises, chief among them former Prime Minister Jenny Shipley.
I spent the majority of the evening with TV3, however, because although it trucked out the same old commentators, it simply had the best in political journalist Linda Clark. A sortie over to One, where Irish flibbertigibbet - sorry, "media commentator" - Noelle McCarthy's blather sounded like nothing more than a quick Google cut-and-paste, had me fleeing back to the voice of experience.
TV3, too, had the luck of the draw with getting first dibs on Key, while he was still so euphoric as to barely be able to control his delight. Or, as Linda Clark put it: "I have never seen the National Party so nice."
