It looks as though the last gubernatorial debate was a hit on TV.

According to the Detroit Free Press, the contest between Governor Jennifer Granholm and challenger Dick DeVos was the most-watched show between 8 and 9 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 16, drawing 252,000 viewers in a nine- county southeastern Michigan viewing area.

That's fewer than the 374,000 homes that tuned in for the first debate on October 2, but it still beat out "Deal or No Deal", the new game show on NBC.

Maybe so, but the debate audience on Monday didn't include me.  I spent the night at a hotel in hotel in Kalamazoo, where the Council of Michigan Foundations was having its annual meeting.  Center for Michigan Executive Director John Bebow and I tried for 20 minutes every channel we could find on the hotel's in-room TV.  No debate.  Not even a mention.

We did, however, jot down what the masters of TV-land presented to us as the candidates for Michigan's highest office were debating.  A quick flip through the channels gave us some insight into the sorry state of our politics ... and our television, a medium once described by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton Minnow as "a vast wasteland."

Usually public-spirited PBS offered the Antiques Roadshow, with an expert explaining details of a samurai sword to an astonished-looking owner, while PaxNet offered an imported (and incomprehensible) British comedy show and ABC carried a family courtroom drama featuring Robin Williams and Sally Field.

Although the hotel's cable system carried several regional network channels, we flipped through every channel repeatedly between 8-9 p.m. and couldn't find the debate. But on "House," a hospital drama on Fox, there appeared to be a discussion about brain surgery, a possibly hopeful reference to the effect the debate might have had on viewers.  Bloomberg discussed the US- Canadian exchange rate, certainly a relevant subject for our politics if Canadian trash came up on the debate, while CN BC discussed eBay and CNN showed more endless footage of violence in Iraq.  HBO Family had a mysterious show on pirates, featuring a guy wearing a Chicago Black Hawks jersey.

Emeril showed us how to make a cream sauce with hot peppers, and MSNBC had Keith Olbermann attacking right wingers. TBS offered a "Friends" and some other channel discussed new details on a Vermont co-ed murder.

At the upper end of the channels, we observed two muscular boxers in repeated clinches, vaguely reminding us of the debate we were missing. And the Learning Channel (I kid you not) had a piece on midgets planting potatoes, which provided an unexpectedly vivid metaphor for the entire gubernatorial campaign.

Phil Power is a longtime observer of politics, economics and education issues in Michigan. He would be pleased to hear from readers at ppower@hcnnet.com. These opinions and others expressed in Phil Power's columns are individual opinions and do not in any way represent official policy positions of the Center For Michigan.