Proposal for format for TV debates

In this post, I propose a format for television debates between two people.
It was devised for political debates, such as those pitting party leaders
against each other at election time, but should be useful for other kinds of
debates. It makes it impossible for debaters to interrupt each other, which
allows each debater much more scope to develop his points.

It works as follows. The programme has no presenter -- nobody appears but
the debaters.

Each debater sits in a room by himself. He can hear the other debater but
can't see him.

Each debater has a fixed allowance of time: one half of the programme's
duration.

One debater has to speak first, of course. The choice of first speaker is
made well before the start of the programme, allowing the debaters to
prepare while knowing who goes first.

The first speaker speaks for as long as he likes (subject to his time
allocation). He then presses a button to hand over to the other speaker.

The other speaker then speaks for as long as he likes. When finished, he
presses a button to hand over to his opponent.

This continues until both speakers have used up all their time.

While a debater is speaking, the technology ensures that he can't hear his
opponent. This is to prevent the opponent from disrupting his thought
processes.

What the viewer of the programme sees, at all times, is the current speaker,
speaking to camera. If the viewer could see both debaters, the one not
speaking would be constrained to look "presidential" or "prime-ministerial",
thus losing the opportunity to jot down notes, or perform some other
activity that would assist his performance.

In general, I expect that each debate will have a topic; for example, the
economy, crime, or the EU. However, if a speaker departs from the topic,
there is no moderator to bring him into line. I don't view this as a
problem. If a debater departs from the topic, the viewers can draw their
own conclusions about why he did so.