Old vs. new media?

Election fever has hit. But I have the feeling there's some parallel-universe thinking going on.

This morning I was listening to a news report prior to the first of the three televised debates between the party leaders. The journalist referred to the fact that TV debates between the candidates has been a central feature of American presidential elections for the past 50 years, but it's a new thing in Britain.
 
The report's news angle was whether a TV debate, whilst new to the UK, was too "old media" to have much impact, and if social media, in particular Twitter and YouTube, was more relevant to a national election in the year 2010. The journalist interviewed two people, each one vehemently arguing the benefits of the one platform versus the other.
 
I find this all very weird. It's as if the medium or platform is everything, and the content is irrelevant. Whereas - obviously (and I can't believe I'm trotting out this cliche yet again) - content is king.
 
What I'm hoping for is that the party leaders say something interesting, that they challenge each other on their parties' weakest areas and that they manage to persuade us that politics as it currently exists in this country still has something going for it.
 
What will happen, of course, is that a certain number of people (ITV is hoping for about 5 million - who knows?) will watch the debate on TV. Many others will read or listen to the reports about the debate in newspapers, online and on the radio. And yet other people will watch clips of the most memorable and / or painful moments on YouTube, while the Twitterati swap their favourite sound bites.
 
Shockingly, some people might even chat to their friends, family and colleagues.
 
Convergence, integration, multi-channel conversations. Call it what you like. The point is, people won't be talking about the medium, they'll be talking about the content.