Detractors blamed the difference between the two debates on the town hall format of the second one and criticized the questions for being ill-focused, too long, and too distracting. Brown, who knew the format could be successful, attributed the problems to a lack of panel preparation. "They weren't prepared. They need to be taught some aspects of television," he said.

"Most of the reporters thought that debate was worthless. The voters thought it was just fine," said the Globe's Robinson, who believed dull questions were the only real problem.

After each debate, the Globe called citizen panelists at home and ran response boxes the next day. The coverage of the second Kennedy-Romney debate !--#include virtuald a box with reaction from the panelists.