That was when Nightline started, American held hostage day 1 and they were on every night during that Carter fiasco..
I read “Rendezvous with Destiny”. The South was solid Carter and didn’t swing to Reagan until Carter started running Reagan is a racist type ads and had black surrogates like Andrew Young denounce Reagan as such. This tactic has a reverse effect for Carter and destroyed his nice guy image. The media was calling him things like “mean”. Carter lost the south and the independent voters everywhere on that stupid strategy.