How much attention do presidential year debates get on television news? The timeline below shows total mentions of "debate" across CNN, MSNBC and Fox News over the past decade and a half, showing 2012 achieved peak attention. Debates have been steadily receiving less attention each year, with CNN a notable outlier this year. The build-up over the months leading up to the debate and how it has differed across each election cycle is fascinating.

Given that the word "debate" can occur in contexts beyond the presidential and vice-presidential debates, what if we just restrict our search to mentions that appear within 15 seconds of "presidential" (even though this will exclude the majority of presidential debate references that merely refer to "the debate"). The results are the same overall, as seen in the timeline below.