Dead Air at the Convention

By Prof. WALT BRASCH

Special to USAfricaonline.com
and The Black Business Journal

With scripts more complex than $100 million feature films, and about as deep as "Dumb and Dumber," the quadrennial PR spectacle known as political conventions invaded Philadelphia, Monday, July 31, 2000 (by the Republicans) for four days, then moves to Los Angeles, August 14-17, 2000 (by the Democrats).

There are TV and movie stars, rock bands, dozens of corporate-sponsored $300,000-$500,000 parties, and a lot of babbling pomposity about compassion, education, defense, and whatever other issues party pollsters determined the people want to hear. The politicians, recognizing the pervasive nature of the mass media, have raised the art of pandering to a level no call girl can ever achieve.

With both parties having already determined their presidential candidates, the only major surprises at the conventions will be if George W. Bush finds a brain or Al Gore begins break-dancing. Each of the four major TV networks are devoting only three to four hours of live coverage to each convention, plus a few minutes on morning wake-up programs and the evening news for discussions and taped highlights. This is about two hours less than the 1996 convention, and significantly less than the gavel- to-gavel coverage of two dozen conventions. The politicians, tripping over each other to find anyone with a microphone and get a few seconds of air time, are upset about so little TV coverage. They want ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX not CNN, PBS, and MSNBC; they will settle for newspaper reporters if no one else is around.

The first televised conventions were in Philadelphia in 1948. At the time, only about 170,000 of the nation's 42.2 million households had televisions. The networks, desperate to fill their government-issued air waves, begged the nation to believe that television was at the cutting edge of the future. TV needed politicians; politicians weren't so sure they needed TV.

By 1960, more than 46 million of the nation's 58 million households had at least one TV set, and most stations were broadcasting at least 16 hours a day. If anyone doubted the potential and power of television, it was quashed that year during the televised Nixon-Kennedy debates which gave the Massachusetts senator a lead he never lost. Eight years later, the cameras recorded the Chicago riots, giving credibility to the antiwar movement and virtually destroying the Democrats' chance to defeat Richard Nixon, even though the liberal Hubert Humphrey deplored the police response and the mayor's iron fist tactics. Today the networks cite low ratings and the absence of news as the reasons why they won't waste their time on coverage. Only about four million Americans at any time watched the 1996 conventions; the networks' marketing analysts figure fewer than 35 percent of Americans will watch even one minute of either convention this year. In contrast, the equally quadrennial Olympics in 1996, with 171 hours of TV coverage, attracted about 25 million Americans at any time, with more than a billion world wide watching at least one part of the 17-day event.

Even with significant coverage by a half dozen news cable networks, fewer Americans watched the first night of this year's Republican convention than heard what Dennis Miller said on his first night as color commentator on ABC's "Monday Night Football." However, ABC-TV, the NFL, and the Republicans apparently worked out some kind of a limited partnership--ABC broadcast the football game a bit earlier; after it was over, the Republicans ushered Gen. Colin Powell onto stage. CBS, NBC, and FOX didn't cover it live. It was the television media that created the atmosphere that demanded "interesting visuals" and the seven-second sound bite; and now the media are upset that politicians, in their infomercial packaged conventions that play to the camera, have nothing to say.

"People know there's nothing really happening" at the conventions, ABC News vice-president Jeff Grainick told the Chicago Tribune in 1996, then stated that the "meaningfulness of these conventions has declined." NBC-TV executive producer Jeff Zucker four years ago said he doubted any network would give much coverage to future conventions. Ted Koppel said there was so little to cover, then pulled his "Nightline" crews from the Republican convention.

It's hard to believe that 16,000 members of the media credentialed to cover each convention can't find any news. So, we'll see the mass of media think they're covering American politics by giving us the usual slickly-prepared mini-bios of the candidates, innocuous featurettes about souvenirs and local foods, and the obligatory interviews with fawning and self- important delegates. There will also be endless semi-erudite commentary that will bore viewers more than any politician's hour-long speech. If the media were to leave their color-coordinated broadcast booths and hospitality suites, and dig beneath the puffery and pageantry, they may find the greater social and political issues that need to be reported, as well as the delightful "slice of life" stories that help us better understand our own lives.

As it is, the writers for Jay Leno, David Letterman, and Conan O'Brien will give America better insight than the politicians who stand before TV cameras, interviewed by personalities who pretend to be journalists. -Brasch, a national award-winning journalist and contributing editor of USAfricaonline.com and The Black Business Journal is a professor of journalism Bloomsburg University Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. He has has covered political campaigns for more than three decades. He was assisted in researching of this column by Rosemary R. Brasch

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