The committee ditched the flabby traditional format and has methodically built a taut, colorful narrative with a "prosecutor's precision and a cinematographer's flair," Mike Allen writes in Axios.
Here's how the committee did it:
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The committee sticks to a single storyline: former President Trump did it. The staff is weaving together thousands of hours of testimony, and tens of thousands of documents, to make that single point. The committee resists tangents about House Republicans or other ancillary players and pares everything back to point the finger at Trump.
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The committee brought in former ABC News president James Goldston, who has been producing each hearing as if it were a "20/20" episode — raw enough to be credible, but scripted enough to sell the story in the allotted time. Goldston has added network-style graphics — an animation of the Capitol breach, a seating chart for a bonkers Oval Office meeting, a West Wing map yesterday to show how close Cassidy Hutchinson sat to the Oval Office.
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The committee is limiting hearings to a couple of hours, rather than the into-the-night grind of so many high-profile hearings. And the committee ditched long opening statements. Instead, a member reads a short introduction, then plunges into live testimony.
