Meeting in a conversational format Wednesday night, Al Gore and George W. Bush won mixed praise from network analysts after a 90-minute face-off where the candidates often forgot to fight.

"I would like to see a count of how many times these two candidates said, 'I agree with you,"' said CNN's William Schneider. "Each man seemed to go out of his way to say, `We don't disagree on this issue."'

Beforehand, NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw had expressed the hopes of many voters when he anticipated "a more spirited exchange" than during their first meeting a week ago.

It wasn't to be.

"No hits, no runs, a few errors -- a kind of Super Bowl of sound bites," said CBS News anchor Dan Rather afterward.

He suggested that Bush and Gore had learned from their vice presidential running mates' debate last Thursday, determining to keep their own encounter even more cordial than the first Bush-Gore debate.

"You might call it Debate Lite," Rather said. "Maybe a little more interesting to viewers who saw both, with the emphasis on little."

Coming together at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., the candidates were seated at a table facing moderator Jim Lehrer, a more informal format than the first debate in Boston Oct. 3, when Bush and Gore stood at lecterns.

ABC News' Sam Donaldson found that Wednesday night "both men did a lot to correct the problems they were seen to have in the first debate."

But on Fox News Channel, Morton Kondracke said Gore "definitely overcorrected. He was on such good behavior that he wasn't himself."

The debate was carried by ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC and C-SPAN.

Several Internet sites also carried live Webcasts of the debate -- ABCNews.com even offered a Spanish translation.

CNN.com featured a "Spin Room" with analysts Bill Press, a Democrat, and Tucker Carlson, a Republican.

"They are both bending over backwards to agree on everything," Press said of the candidates.

"Wow, this is PBS-level boring," Carlson injected.

Bush and Gore have one more debate scheduled, next Tuesday in St. Louis.