Election night

This article discusses live two-way interviews between television presenter s in the studio and programme participants at outside broadcast locations. It concerns itself in particular with the relationship between the televisi on event and the event-in-itself, outlining the way in which one programme, Election 97, brings spatially dispersed individuals and places together in a dialectical relationship and suggesting that the television event in suc h instances is generated not by the reconstruction of events at some discre te remote location but rather via the penetration of a multiplicity of remo te sites into one another in the live space of the broadcast. It concludes by arguing for a view of the event as complex, self-referential and multipl y-mediated when seen from the perspective of its spatio-temporal dynamics.