Last summer, nearly 20 million viewers attended the first primetime hearing of the House Select Committee’s investigation into the January 6 attack on the Capitol. What he saw was unlike any televised congressional hearing he had ever seen: a tightly organized, rigidly structured presentation that recorded testimony, previously unseen footage of the attack, and other news clips in the live proceedings.
In the days that followed, the hearings continued in this form, taking the form of a sequential narrative. There were shocking twists (former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that her boss knew the crowd was armed) and even cliffhangers enticing viewers to stay tuned for the next day’s development.
It was a far cry from the cumbersome, meandering (and usually quite old) style of most congressional hearings. And it’s all thanks to James Goldston, the former head of ABC News. The House committee brought on him as a consultant to help wrestle a vast amount of material into a clear, digestible format that would cut through the daily cacophony. “We live in an era where, no matter how important the topic is, it’s competing for attention,” Goldston told TheWrap. “People are distracted, people have a lot going on. And so the hope was, by bringing these new technologies into this format, that we could connect people in a way that they might not have otherwise. ,
Goldston and his team certainly nailed it: the second primetime hearing attracted 17.7 million viewers (“equivalent to the average audience for Sunday Night Football”) and the six-day broadcast drew 11.2 million (the top TV season’s peak). is about the average viewership for). -rated network series, “NCIS”). And that doesn’t even include viewership on C-SPAN, PBS or online.
“The number of people watching live and engaging with content on social media and online was pretty extraordinary,” Goldston said. “I’m a great believer in the power of fiction and the power of storytelling. And that’s not one to manipulate the facts or change the facts in any way. But the presentation is really important. How you tell the story is really about is important.”
Now that this particular story is told in such a compelling way, can we expect future congressional hearings to be in line? “Obviously there’s a possibility that they go back to the old ways, but I think having explored it that way, I’m pretty sure there are a lot of these lessons going forward,” Goldston said. “Storytelling in itself can be an incredible tool of worldwide collective engagement.”
Attending her presentation to the world of whatever lasting changes may result from the January 6 hearing holds special meaning for Goldston, a British native who became a US citizen in 2017. “I felt it was my civic duty to do what I could to get the new American into it,” he said. “It has been a very rewarding experience.”
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