How much time did Congress have to avert a government shutdown on Friday? The news media kept track -- down to the second.
As if it were New Year's Eve, news outlets as diverse as CNN, National Journal and ABCNews.com ticked down the minutes and seconds until midnight Friday with shutdown "countdown clocks."
The clocks conveyed the pressure the legislators were under and, depending on one's point of view, either glee or dread about the outcome. The clocks "satisfy a basic desire that we can bring politics down to crisp deadlines and hard numbers -- stuff that's usually the realm of sportswriters," said Rick Klein, a senior ABC editor.
Visual dramaAs early as Monday, Bloomberg Television was running a government shutdown clock on the bottom of the screen during some news reports. Other networks trotted out calendars with Friday night's deadline circled in red ink. As the week progressed, websites that were in their infancy in the mid-1990s, the last time a shutdown took effect, added their own clocks.
The @Govt_Shutdown account on Twitter, started by National Journal, posted a new message at the top of each hour about the impending deadline.
On Friday the clocks added a dose of visual drama to what was otherwise a visually uninteresting day of news statements and floor speeches. At one point, CNN sprawled the clock out on a screen behind the anchor, making each of the numbers almost as big as the person's head.
Poking funThe countdown clocks have become something of a joke in television circles. On Comedy Central on Monday night, Stephen Colbert, the faux-conservative commentator, extinguished one candle on what he called his "government shutdown menorah."
When House Speaker Boehner, came before the cameras Thursday and said no agreement had been reached, Lizzie O'Leary, a Washington correspondent for Bloomberg TV, wrote on Twitter in capital letters, "Keep Those Shutdown Clocks Running, Graphics Departments!"
