For once, nationalist and republican politicians must have cried bitter tears to see one of their unionist opponents cruelly beaten down. Politics is a rough business, and under the glare of the television lights it can be a daunting and damning experience.
Tuesday night's UTV Insight programme focused on what up to the time of broadcast was undoubtedly the marginal seat of North Belfast. This should have been rich, unpredictable territory: four candidates; Yes versus No unionist; Sinn Fein head-to-head with the SDLP.
In the Assembly elections of three years ago, Sinn Fein, the DUP and the SDLP each got 21 per cent of the vote. While the UUP took only 11 per cent of the poll in 1998, Cecil Walker, by virtue of being the sitting Ulster Unionist MP, also was in with a good chance. North Belfast should have been the tightest of tussles. But television can be an unforgiving medium, as Mr Walker discovered on Tuesday night.
Mr Walker is 76, a politician of the old school, personable, pro-Belfast Agreement, and a man who worked with Joe Hendron when he was the SDLP MP for West Belfast to attract investment into the many deprived areas of north and west Belfast.
He was prevailed upon by the UUP hierarchy to stand again in North Belfast, which he has held since 1983, although it is understood he would have preferred to bow out of politics. Like his opponents, Nigel Dodds of the DUP, Alban Maginness of the SDLP and Gerry Kelly of Sinn Fein, he was allowed 60 seconds to deliver his pitch to an invited audience on the UTV programme, and thereafter take questions from the crowd.
Repeatedly, however, Mr Walker said he couldn't hear the questions. He appeared tongue-tied and uncertain. He struggled to the end of his stint, the brief answers he gave not always in line with the nature of the questions put to him.
Afterwards his excuse was that his hearing aid had run down, which in itself hardly inspired confidence. The programme was recorded in advance and David Trimble yesterday said UTV should have pulled the broadcast to spare his candidate such humiliation.
It was indeed excruciating television. One couldn't but feel sorry for Mr Walker, but as is being illustrated on an almost daily basis - consider the alleged smear campaigns against Ulster Unionist Lesley Cree in North Down and Independent unionist Jim Dixon in Fermanagh-South Tyrone - this is a rough election.
There was sympathy for Mr Walker but it is problematic whether that will translate into votes, even though David Trimble stood by him. There was no surprise that Peter Robinson urged the UUP leader to withdraw his candidate from North Belfast.
Tuesday may have spelled the end of Mr Walker's career. Equally, it won't have helped either Sinn Fein or the SDLP, which believed North Belfast was there for the taking. A few minutes of harsh television probably assured the seat for Nigel Dodds of the DUP.
What was demonstrated on Tuesday night was that television and radio will have a bearing on this campaign. Party candidates and spokespersons must be up to the mark. Image in Northern Ireland isn't as important as in Britain, where the art of spin and slick presentation has been refined to an almost disturbing level. But it will be interesting to study whether the DUP restricts the amount of air-time it allows its leader, Ian Paisley, who tends to the bombastic, or whether the SDLP will manage to persuade John Hume to alter his now famous or infamous "single transferable speech".
In the past Mr Trimble's temper has exploded on television, but in recent years, under pressure from Ulster Unionist stalwarts such as Ken Maginnis, he has curbed his tendency to behave erratically when facing the cameras or radio microphones. His minders will urge Mr Trimble to maintain that calm Yeats called an ordered passion.
Sinn Fein candidates, many of them schooled in interviewing techniques at Castlereagh interrogation centre rather than by Terry Prone, are generally comfortable on radio and TV.
All candidates will have been chastened by the experience of watching the programme on Tuesday night. There was genuine compassion for Mr Walker, even from the DUP, which nonetheless also tried to exploit the incident to Mr Dodds's advantage.
There but for the grace of God go I, was the quiet mantra from most politicians afterwards. If the medium is the message, the other message on Tuesday night was that candidates must be comfortable with the medium.