Call it the battle of the buses. Paul Martin had barely finished his sentence – dissolving Parliament and calling a federal election for June 28 – before the three national networks all hit the road, loading their reporters onto tricked-out rolling newsrooms and leaving the familiar media enclaves of B.C. and Ontario for a 35-day trek across the Canadian political landscape.

The engines, of course, had been revving for months, what with the prolonged run-up to the election call, but when the green flag finally dropped, it launched a race as much for ratings as for votes.

No doubt, the buses are useful marketing tools, and to varying degrees are used by all three nets to reinforce their particular angles in covering the campaigns. CBC and Global are both taking their coverage off the campaign trail, stopping in small towns to talk with Mr. and Mrs. Average Canadian about the issues of the moment, while CTV, boasting not just a single bus but a ‘news caravan’ of satellite equipment, microwave trucks and a mobile studio, is talking up its all-encompassing coverage.

These are all valid ways to hook viewers. But Global news anchor Kevin Newman, reached somewhere in Alberta just a few days into the campaign, insists the road trips also promote better coverage.

‘People think the bus is a gimmick, but I think the thing we’re learning out here is that Canadians aren’t tuned in to [the election] yet. It’s given us the perspective to say, hey, people are not even sure if they’re voting for prime minister or premier at this point. The media elites are off to the races but Canadians just aren’t there yet.’

‘The purpose is to get into the country, away from the leaders’ tours,’ says CTV news president Robert Hurst. ‘The leaders’ tours are orchestrated by the campaign staff to put their best foot forward and to control the news coverage.’

The Global bus started in B.C. and is heading east. CTV’s convoy started in Ottawa, drove down through Quebec and the Maritimes before heading west, while CBC is heading in a more or less straight line from the East Coast to the West Coast, taking suggestions from the public about where it should stop. One wonders if the three will cross paths, perhaps on the Trans Canada Highway somewhere in Manitoba.

CTV has Craig Oliver, Sandy Rinaldo and Lisa LaFlamme, among others, in the field, while Mike Duffy anchors its daily election series for CTV Newsnet and Lloyd Robertson stays put on the main network. Newman fronts his net’s coverage from the road, flanked by other CanWest Global staff, including a National Post writer. The Ceeb’s bus has Mark Kelley and Bonnie Allen, plus two radio reporters.

CBC News editor-in-chief Tony Burman seems confident in the net’s ability to lead the ratings race, an attitude further reflected in its somewhat more muted promotion. The net also announced it would not spend much time reporting on the minutiae of polls.

‘Polls really suck the oxygen out of the room; they smother the debate,’ says Burman. ‘It’s like saying ‘It’s sunny today.’ Well, that doesn’t tell me anything about what it’ll be like a month from now.’

Burman predicts the net’s core viewers will be joined by a high number of non-core viewers who default to the net during major news events.

Hurst and Newman see it differently, insisting that big and especially prolonged news stories are a chance to score points off the other guy.

‘Big stories of any kind offer opportunities for viewer switching,’ says Newman, pointing to his net’s ratings spike the day of the election call.

Hurst agrees. ‘Viewers want their favorite news provider to provide the best news that is relevant to them, and if they see one net going out into the hinterlands and doing good stories and the other is not, an impression is made,’ he says. ‘It reinforces among viewers that ‘My team is the best team’ or not.’

-www.cbc.ca

-www.ctv.ca

-www.canada.com/globaltv