Your candidate forum keeps working after the live hour ends

A candidate forum lasts one evening. Then it’s gone, unless somebody kept the recording and put it where voters can find it.

WDIV in Detroit shows what keeping it looks like. On Oct. 15, the station put Michigan’s two candidates for governor in a studio with no audience. The debate went out live on the station’s TV channel, on its streaming channel, Local 4+, and on its own website, ClickOnDetroit.com.

Then the station did the part that’s easy to forget. Its debate page now also carries separate videos. There’s one for each opening statement, one for each closing statement, and several built around single questions. A voter who missed the live hour can open the one question they care about.

Nexstar’s stations hosted 24 debates and forums during the primaries and planned 17 more live debates this fall, for offices like senator, governor and member of Congress. But if you run a small TV station, a local paper, a community radio show or a League of Women Voters chapter, your city council race isn’t on that list. Nobody is coming to film it. If you don’t record that forum, the only record is the memory of the people in the room.

So what does it take for an outlet with a small team and a community room?

Set the rules before you send the invitations

KTVZ in Bend, Oregon, published its election plan on Sept. 1. The station invited every candidate certified for the ballot. But it set one rule in advance. If only one candidate in a race accepts, KTVZ hosts a single-candidate town hall instead of a debate.

In Florida, the League of Women Voters of Sarasota County wrote its own rule. It adds a forum for a race only if at least two candidates agree to take part.

A rule like this protects you when a candidate says no. You aren’t picking a side when a lectern stays empty. You’re following the rule you posted weeks earlier. Put yours in writing on the page where the stream will play, next to the date and time.

Both groups also use two moderators. KTVZ pairs its political reporter with a member of its community partner, The Source. In Sarasota, the League’s co-president moderates with the executive editor of Suncoast Searchlight, the League’s partner for the forums. Two moderators from two organizations make it harder for anyone to call the forum one outlet’s show.

Collect questions next to the stream

KTVZ takes voter questions through a form on KTVZ.com and in the KTVZ News app. For the League forums it streams, questions go by email at least 72 hours before each forum.

That deadline does more work than it seems to. It gives the moderators three days to read every question, group the ones that repeat (people often ask the same thing in different words) and set aside any that are aimed at only one candidate. Copy both parts: a form on your own site, and a deadline. And when the form sits on the same page as the stream, the people who sent questions know exactly where to come back on forum day.

Stream from the room you have

The League forums in central Oregon don’t happen in a studio. The list includes a college community room in Redmond, the central library in Bend, a high school, a county government meeting room and the Sisters Firehouse Community Hall. KTVZ streams those forums live on its digital platforms anyway. The League reaches the station’s audience. The station gets local forums on its site without producing each one itself.

Sarasota keeps it even simpler. The League streams every forum on its YouTube channel, records each one for its website, and asks for no registration. A viewer has one address to remember, before the forum and after it.

If you work with a partner, settle two things before forum day: who runs the stream, and which website keeps the recording. Then print that one address on everything.

Cut the recording into one video per question

Go back to WDIV. The full debate is an hour long. A voter who wants one answer shouldn’t have to watch the whole hour to find it.

You can do the same with a small team. Post the full recording on the evening of the forum. The next day, cut one video per question. Title each one with the question as it was asked, not with a candidate’s name. If a question went to every candidate, put every answer in the same video, in the order they were given. That keeps the edit fair, and it saves you from a week of arguments about who got the better cut.

But this part costs time. A forum with ten questions means ten videos, and each one has to be found, trimmed, titled and posted. If you only have one evening, post the full recording and cut the two or three questions people asked most. A few clips are better than none.

Four things to do before your forum

1. Post your rule for who gets a forum, as KTVZ did. It protects you when a candidate says no.
2. Open a question form with a deadline three days out. That gives your moderators time to sort the questions.
3. Put the stream, the time and the form on one page. Voters then have one address to remember.
4. Keep the full recording and the question videos online until Nov. 3. A voter who decides late still finds them.

There’s still time. The Venice City Commission forum in Sarasota County is on Oct. 23. Your forum can still happen this month, and its videos can answer voters until Nov. 3.

Also this week

YouTube will test live streams that translate as you talk

YouTube announced Live auto dubbing on Sept. 23, at its Made on YouTube event. It turns a streamer’s speech into another language in real time, so a viewer picks a language and hears the stream in it while the streamer is still talking. The pilot starts in early 2027. Upstream’s recap of the event lists English and Spanish as the first two languages, and it works on speech only, so a music stream gets nothing from it. YouTube’s reason fits in one number. More than 40% of live watch time comes from viewers outside the creator’s home country. Worth checking where your own viewers watch from.

Read more: YouTube Official Blog · Upstream

Turn recording on before the forum starts

Three things decide whether your forum recording is ready when the forum ends. First, the record setting. In WpStream it only changes while the channel is turned off, so a forum records from the start or not at all. Set it before you go live. Second, timing. After the channel turns off, the recording takes some minutes (sometimes more) to appear in your recordings list. Nothing is broken, so wait. Third, and this one trips people up, a recording isn’t a video on demand until you turn it into one. It also won’t play on the live stream’s page unless you put it there yourself.

Read more: WpStream

One church service, live in over 80 languages

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints held its October general conference on Oct. 3 and 4, 2026, from the Conference Center in Salt Lake City. According to the Church Newsroom, the sessions went out live in over 80 languages. Each place carried its own share. The broadcasts page on ChurchofJesusChrist.org and the Gospel Library app had 80, and the General Conference YouTube channel had 14. After the broadcast, the talks go up as text, audio and video in up to 98 languages. The part a smaller stream can copy: when one broadcast plays in several places, tell viewers which place has the most.

Read more: Church Newsroom · Deseret News