Abc, Five Others, Offer Candidates Free Air Time

Tired of presidential candidates doing nothing but attacking each other? Frustrated by 30-second commercials that gloss over national problems? There might be something a little different this fall.

On Wednesday, ABC became the sixth television network to offer free air time to major presidential candidates, unfiltered by questions or instant commentary from reporters.

Although the offers range in time and format - from 5 minutes a week on CNN to an hour on ABC all are designed to change the course of American politics, a course of increasingly negative attacks and sound bites that have left millions of citizens turned off and tuned out.

“Maybe, just maybe, this new voluntary format will drown out those negative ads that turn off so many citizens,” former CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite wrote in an article for USA TODAY this week.

“Maybe it will increase voter participation. It might even chip away at the cynicism rampant in our political culture,” said Cronkite, one of a group of journalists, politicians, academics and others who prodded the networks for months to offer the free time.

They want the free air time to help Americans get more and better information from candidates for president. They say that has grown difficult, if not impossible, as politicians use 30-second television commercials and as television news condenses coverage.

One example: During this year’s Republican primaries, viewers watching ABC, CBS or NBC saw the average quote from a candidate reduced to 7.2 seconds. Cronkite said that television viewers saw the network reporters six times as much as they saw the candidates.

A generation ago, in 1968, the average television coverage of a presidential candidate talking was 42 seconds.