Richard Nixon's 1968 U.S. Presidential campaign staged nine live televised question and answer sessions using a ground-breaking theatre-in-the-round format broadcast with a live studio television audience and local residents directly asking questions of the candidate. The producer of Nixon's "Man in the Arena" live town-hall programs was Roger Ailes, who later went to on start Fox News. Ailes' use of a direct voter-to-candidate question-and-answer format served as the blueprint for subsequent and now ubiquitous town hall candidate formats and even multiple-candidate debates.