The LA Times’ Matea Gold previews Super Tuesday coverage…

Avoracious appetite for political news has prompted the broadcast television networks and their cable counterparts to gear up for extensive coverage of Super Tuesday, offering programming more typical of a presidential general election than a February primary day.

“This dominates in ways that politics hasn’t dominated since November of 2000, which was all politics all the time,” said Phil Griffin, NBC News’ senior vice president in charge of MSNBC. “There’s always been great interest at times like this, but this is great interest on steroids. People are consumed by it, and they’re going to flip around until they get to the next interesting development.”

With political newscasts attracting growing audiences, ABC and CBS chucked their original plans to do one-hour prime-time reports on the results of Tuesday’s two dozen primaries and caucuses. Instead, Charles Gibson will anchor five hours of coverage with his ABC colleagues Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos while Katie Couric helms a two-hour special on CBS. Over on NBC, Brian Williams will anchor an expanded edition of “Nightly News” and a one-hour prime-time report on the results.