Once upon an election year, the Democratic and Republican national conventions received near-continuous coverage from NBC, ABC, and CBS. In 2004, though, the networks have all but sworn off the conventions, broadcasting each for just three hours apiece. What's changed since the days of Hubert Humphrey and Pat Buchanan? And how can political junkies recapture America's quadrennial civics lesson? A discussion with New York Observer columnist Terry Golway and Alex S. Jones, director of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy.
Terry Golway
Imagine for a moment that it's 1992 and the Republican Party is assembling in Houston to nominate George Bush Senior and Dan Quayle for re-election. The convention lacks drama, so the networks decide to cover only the bare minimum. They'll devote a couple of hours to the acceptance speeches and maybe the keynote address.
And so they miss the convention's pivotal events: Pat Buchanan's fiery declaration of cultural war and Marilyn Quayle's bitter defense of her husband.
In reality, of course, the networks did not miss these speeches, because even though they had begun scaling back convention coverage, they still were engaged enough to broadcast these speeches in prime time. That's why they became the convention's defining moments. Many analysts will tell you that Buchanan's speech in particular helped turn the tide for Bill Clinton and Al Gore that year.
This year, however, if there is a Buchanan moment, chances are the networks will miss it.
That's a shame, because conventions are still newsworthy, even if they're no longer what Walter Cronkite once called a national civics lesson. The problem is that while conventions have adapted to television, television news hasn't adapted to the modern political convention.
News executives are right to say that news doesn't happen at the podium anymore. The Buchanan speech was, in fact, an anomaly, and convention scriptwriters have been careful to avoid such deviations from the party line ever since (although who knows what Al Sharpton may have to say during his speech in Boston?). And the networks are right to condemn those awful biographical videos as mere propaganda, not news.
But the networks are wrong to walk away from extensive coverage simply because they can't figure out a way not to feel manipulated. They should be looking for stories where news actually takes place: in the hospitality lounges, the swanky receptions, the streets.
Admittedly, this isn't easy to do. Then again, one of the networks finds enough news and features to justify hours of pregame coverage of the Super Bowl every year. Perhaps the news executives should bring in their colleagues from sports to help capture the color and flavor of these events, just as The New York Times used to deploy sports columnist Red Smith to the conventions.
Why not bring us some “up close and personal” stories about particularly interesting or provocative delegates? Why not go to the receptions and caucuses in search of insight (and maybe even news)? For example, four years ago I covered two delegate receptions in adjoining hotel lounges at the Republican convention in Philadelphia. One, hosted by Long Island Congressman Peter King, featured James Hoffa Jr., the head of the Teamsters, who was expressing some interest in George W. Bush. The mood was lively, even raucous, and the beer was free. Next door, a sour bunch of Republicans were paying tribute to then-Congressman Bob Barr, who was identified, simply and defiantly, as “Impeachment Manager.” Here, the Clinton wars were still in full fury (and to make matters even grimmer, the beer was going for $4 a pop).
I wrote a piece about these two contrasting receptions, symbolizing as they did a cultural split in the party that Bush had to bridge to win. Could a smart television essay have done justice to this story? Why not?
Alex S. Jones
The momentum and force with which the world of communications has changed since 1992 is almost frightening. Think back: In 1992 the Internet was just testing its wings as a commercial power. The dot-com bubble had not yet begun. Most cable services offered tens of channels, not hundreds. No movies on demand. No TiVo.
The networks were still dominant over cable. The Internet was primitive, without broadband or streaming video or scores of political bloggers. Some newspapers didn't even have Web sites, much less the ambitious sites that all major news organizations now support.
It is important to keep all this in mind as we compare how the networks covered the conventions in 1992 with the very modest prime-time coverage they will provide for this year's conventions. Indeed, compared with the gavel-to-gavel coverage of the '50s and '60s, when conventions were as combative and unpredictable as the Super Bowl, the 1992 coverage was thin gruel. But at least all the major speeches got on the air.
They will this time around as well -- just not literally on the air. They will be on the various news channels via cable or satellite, and on the Web. We now overwhelmingly watch television through cable or satellite; the Web is increasingly the news vehicle of choice for the young.
But the unhappy fact is that, even though the gavel-to-gavel coverage will be available, there is not a great likelihood that a huge audience will be there for it. In a recent survey for the Vanishing Voter Project, less than a third of the respondents said that they intended to watch some or most of the upcoming Democratic convention. The project found that this is about the same level of interest as existed in 2000, when there was not nearly the level of interest in the election itself as there is now.
The challenge, as Terry suggested, is how to make a scripted and tensionless event into interesting news. Both parties have gone to great lengths to wring all the emotion from the proceedings except for wild, joyous cheering.
In the cracks and background, there is always something to report, but even here the stories have a numbing sameness. The fat cats being feted. The protesters screaming and complaining. The disaffected delegate here and there letting off steam.
A truly radical change would be to do what the parties -- and a good bit of the public -- might want the media to do: Simply turn on the cameras and shut up for once. The parties want their sales pitch to go out unfiltered and unmediated; the voters want to decide for themselves, unprompted and unadvised. They want the media to take a break from the kind of coverage that has earned journalists the reputation of being cynical, hostile to politics and politicians, and generally a pain in the butt.
Seems reasonable to me, once every four years.
Would it be so wrong for the media to put the conventions on the air and, without journalistic comment, just let the events take place? It would be revolutionary. It would be shocking. It would be a respite from the constant he said, she said, a seventh-inning stretch in the campaign. And it might make some journalistic critics glad when journalists resumed their sniping and fact-checking once the convention ended.
Telling journalists to stay home would save news organizations millions, and that money could be used for more and better coverage of the campaign itself.
Is a journalism holiday for the conventions likely to happen? No. But it really isn't such a bad idea.
Golway
I like Alex's idea of presenting the convention speeches unfiltered. As luck would have it, sports coverage offers a precedent. In 1980, NBC broadcast a football game without commentary -- no play-by-play man, no analyst, nothing but the sounds of the game. I loved it, although I guess I was in the minority. The experiment came to an end after one game.
If the networks did as Alex suggested, anchors and commentators would be relieved of tedious chitchat and superficial, fill-up-air-time analysis. Political junkies would welcome this sort of coverage -- like hardcore sports fans, they tend to regard commentary as an intrusion anyway -- and it might help return convention coverage to its roots as a national civics lesson.
I do think, however, that television can and should find a way to bring new life to its coverage of these extraordinary gatherings. Yes, cede the podium to the parties -- but find out what's happening in the (non-)smoking rooms where the California or Florida delegations are meeting. Present the speeches without commentary, but assign reporters to cover the people on the floor. I've met dozens of delegates since I began covering conventions in 1984, and many of them had moving, earnest, and dramatic stories to tell about their communities and their involvement in local politics. If the networks thought of the delegates not as mere spectators but as active participants in the political process, they might find the drama that is so conspicuously lacking at the podium.
At the risk of sounding earnest myself, I do think networks have an obligation to recommit themselves to convention coverage, albeit in some new and perhaps revolutionary way. And, at the risk of repeating myself, I again suggest that the news divisions take a good look at sports coverage, especially NBC's coverage of this year's Summer Olympics (another quadrennial spectacle). Over the last decade or so, NBC has taken the “up close and personal” approach to Olympic coverage, emphasizing human-interest stories almost at the expense of covering the actual events themselves. Sports fans find this annoying, but casual watchers are invariably intrigued. The formula has worked well for the network.
Important political events -- yes, conventions still qualify as such -- deserve more than a niche audience. With a little more creativity, the networks may be able to capture the attention of non-junkies who think C-SPAN is a bridge and Meet the Press is a dry-cleaning operation.
Jones
Call me realistic or call me cynical, but I think that there is virtually no chance of winning network television back to the kind of in-depth convention coverage that Terry wistfully imagines. In a better world -- or a different world, at least -- that would be a wonderful thing, and I would welcome a new commitment by the networks as an astonishing step in the right direction.
But the key word here is “astonishing.” The priorities of network television are as apt to veer toward public service as they are to veer away from a surefire ratings-grabbing reality show.
Perhaps if we could marry the reality concept to convention coverage, it might make a difference. How about something based on The Apprentice, but in the area of political spin? Whoever most successfully spins the media gets the plum job. Lying, threatening, scheming, flirting, vamping, tricking, seducing, humiliating, blackmailing, betraying -- all the ratings-grabbing elements would be there.
Short of that, forget it. The networks aren't coming back. Canceling the regular prime-time programming for convention coverage would lose viewers and cost them millions in lost ad revenue. And make no mistake: The networks are fighting for their livelihoods.
So, what does that leave us? As it turns out, quite a lot. The kind of coverage Terry imagines might be a stunning bit of counterprogramming for one of the alternatives to the networks. There is a hungry, intelligent, interested, and angry audience out there that is not being served. This is the television audience that has increasingly been abandoning network television news for National Public Radio, which is one of the few news organizations to show big audience growth in recent years. The FOX News audience has also abandoned the networks, but the migration to NPR suggests a dissatisfaction with television all together.
Cable-news channels that invest in high-quality convention coverage could win an audience that would, by the standards of cable television, be significant. It doesn't take that many people to make a cable channel handsomely profitable, and the profit expectations are not as great on cable, so the ratings pressure is not quite so overwhelming.
Could a CNN or an MSNBC -- or even a FOX News -- make a splash with smart, intense convention coverage? One would certainly think so.
And now blogging has been introduced to the conventions. This year, for the first time, bloggers will be given convention credentials like journalists get, which is in recognition that political bloggers are now serious players. It may be that the blogosphere is the perfect place to observe a state-of-the-art political convention, which means a pageant as unstructured and spontaneous as the crowning of Miss America. For bloggers, this kind of thing is a sitting duck.
Will bloggers make mincemeat of the proceedings? Will they be inspired? Will they get out and talk to people face to face to find out what is happening, rather than sit at their screens and opine? One hopes so. That would be a refreshing change from the thin tea that is most convention coverage.
The point is that an improvement -- any improvement -- is going to have to come from somewhere else. The networks aren't going to do it, and wishing won't make it so. Should that be the case? Of course not. The networks have a lease on public property -- the airwaves -- and they operate with the protection of the First Amendment. Do they owe us more and better? Without question.
But that doesn't change the facts of the matter. So, look for change, ask for change. But do it where it might happen.
Terry Golway is a columnist for The New York Observer. Alex S. Jones is the director of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
