So much for suspense.

Thanks to Section 329 of the Canada Elections Act, much of the country had to pick up TV coverage of election night at the story’s end — a Conservative government “of some kind” and the NDP in official opposition — and then flash back to the middle, to learn how it happened.

By then, the beginning — early voting results from the Atlantic provinces — were all but forgotten, where they weren’t ignored entirely. TV is all about the here and now, and when one picks up a story three hours after it’s started, it’s hard to gain any perspective.

TV tried, though. And for the most part, it succeeded. This election, perhaps more than any election in recent memory, meant something. It wasn’t a one-off wedding, obsessed over on a Friday, forgotten by the following Monday.

What happened with the federal election — Jack Layton and the NDP had an American Idol kind of night, both in the ratings and at the voting polls — will have real-world implications and reverberations for weeks and months to come, even if TV was forced to pick up the story after it was half over.

Thanks to a closer-than-expected race in the closing days and weeks of the campaign, ridings in some of the more far-flung reaches of the Pacific time zone played a more critical role than they might have otherwise. Late Monday, ridings on Vancouver Island were deciding the difference between a Conservative majority or minority. .

The most important TV event of the year for anyone who voted may have been reduced to a flashback, but it was a revealing flashback just the same. Viewers watching in real time may not have been witness to history exactly, but they saw, as CBC’s Peter Mansbridge put it, the end of Canadian politics as it used to be,

One change — unintended but not unexpected — was the way Twitter users circumvented Elections Act rules. According to several news reports, voters who wanted to know the results as they came in, not when they were announced on TV, circumvented TV altogether and went the Twitter route. Technology won’t be denied.

By the time it started, Canadian TV election coverage had its quintessentially Canadian touches: CBC’s Evan Solomon and his “smart board,” a low-budget version of CNN’s Big Wall; Global TV’s tips on how to “get interactive” by using tech toys other than a TV — Twitter users were way ahead on that one — and CTV’s reliance on its old cadre of election experts.

Lloyd Robertson, in particular, seems rejuvenated by major news events. He has been a familiar face in Canadian homes for more than 35 years, but he becomes 20 years younger whenever he’s hosting the Olympics or emceeing an election night for the ages. “That laugh you just heard was Pamela Wallin,” he quipped of the Tory Senator and fellow CTV panellist at one opine, following a Conservative win in a key riding. “No objectivity there.”

Robertson, 77, and Mansbridge, 62, have witnessed the halcyon election years of Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien, but here was something different: The resurrection of the spirit of Tommy Douglas and the emergence of the NDP as Canada’s official Opposition for the first time in the young nation’s history.

Global’s Dawna Friesen had the good taste — and patriotic acumen — to wear red — not Liberal red, but Canadian maple lead red.

More importantly, she was energetic but not inappropriately overenthusiastic, even if she does have a weakness for saying “you know” in tete-a-tete conversation. Global’s Eric Sorensen was calm and authoritative in front of Global’s election board, a big, curved flatscreen more along the John King CNN model than the CBC.

The breakdown of Canada’s three main broadcasters’ TV coverage followed their respective corporate brands in the main: sleek and uptempo for Global; old-school, old-time class and sophistication for CTV; and unapologetic Canadiana for CBC.

Monday’s election TV coverage may have marked a changing of the guard beyond the results themselves: The ageless Robertson and virtually ageless Mansbridge are nearing the end of their broadcasting careers, and it’s not hard to imagine that future elections on Canada’s two main networks will be hosted by new faces.

That makes Friesen the de-facto future face of Canadian election-night broadcasting, along with CTV’s Lisa LaFlamme, Robertson’s official heir-in-waiting.

That’s telling in its own right because it shows how this country is ahead of its U.S. broadcasting cousin in one important respect: A woman can be the face of a national network newscast, and no one makes a big deal about it.

Meanwhile, on the election front, an NDP MP can be the official leader of the Opposition, and no one will make a big deal about it ever again.

   

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