Just wondering if the media would benefit if a presidential election was set to be a blow out and not remain close?  I am curious what benefit they would have by NOT saying the election is close and telling others to stay tuned.

There is no benefit. Close elections mean a lot more money being spent on advertisements by both sides and it means more eyes will be watching, which also means more money for those ad spots.

Talking to your base/personal prefrences.  Argueably most of the media does not target moderates... because moderates rarely watch the news.  It's a good thing to note that CNN is the least watched news station... except whenever there is a shooting or a terrorist attack or somethign.  Then it shoots to first place, because it's the "most trusted" name in news, and the one all the moderates watch. (Though it's moving away from this.)

If we're talking elections... are you going to aim for the "Democrats or not voting",  "Republicans or not voting" or the indepentents.   Independents are a small portion of the electorate compaired to either big base.  Who mostly want to only hear good news about their side one way or the other.   Few people actually care about politics, and more about having their prefrences justified.  Reporting an election how it is, really is only of interst to "true moderates" and then people who like to talk about elections in other countries as well... because they find poltics interesting and are curious about who's going to get elected everywhere.

That said, i think such things arne't actually consious deciesions so much as the case of a general groupthink that kind of involves most of the media.  That in general and a unwillingless to report things differently. 

If you had to draw a parralel a good example would be sexism in the media.  Sure there are the occasional outlier reporter who's actually sexist like say... Chris Matthews, but mostly there is a prevelent sexism in coverage and how stories are reported largely due to a groupthink and male mindset that generally causes stories to be written and reported differently in slight ways that make all the differnce.

"IE one party hit's back about something, the party complains about it.... one side get's it's authority positions dropped in conversation more etc."

Yes! The media definitely wants close elections because of ad-buys. Close elections generate more money spent by both sides, and campaigns are going to shoot for tv ads if they can afford it. They're expensive, but they work. This holds for most "big" elections (president, US Senate and House, state governor). The further you get from national elections, the less likely you are to see tv ads because of how expensive they are, so you probably won't see many tv ads for local offices.

And my take away from what I thought I was seeing is that the media guys are going to do whatever is needed for ratings.  And they want things close, so people tune in.

I don't know. I think there comes a point when they wouldn't even try to make a race seem close. If the polls show a 20 point lead in the final months of a presidential campaign, it would be pretty difficult to portray an election as close. Luckily, for news networks, presidential elections are quite close (the Electoral College tends to exagerrate the size of victory), so they would not need to fabricate competition.

perhaps.  A close election is good for the media.  However, one thing that is even better for the media is a imploding campaign.  Media LOVES campaign mistakes, even the tiny ones.  They latch onto these mistakes and blow them out of proportion.  I mean, look at the month of september, the media didn't focus on a close election, but on Romney's imploding campaign.  

So, my take is that while the media might enjoy a close election, they love an election with an imploding campaign even more.