Orhestrated Conventions Challenge Networks

They were handing out “Lehrer and Brokaw in ‘96” buttons at the National Press Club last week as the network anchors tried to drum up interest in their joint coverage of this summer’s political conventions.

PBS’s Jim Lehrer said that since he began covering such gatherings in 1960, “everyone always predicted they were going to be dull. They were going to be boring. They were going to be irrelevant.” But he insisted, “It’s important. It matters.”

NBC’s Tom Brokaw called the conventions “the one opportunity we have in America for all the political constituencies to come together under a common roof and argue, sometimes civilly and sometimes not so civilly. … This time will be especially important.”

Not so important, however, that NBC and the other major broadcast networks are willing to blow out lucrative prime-time schedules for the gavel-to-gavel coverage of decades past. Instead they will probably air 60 to 90 minutes a night, with NBC reporters appearing on PBS until 10 p.m.

Officials at ABC will not even commit to nightly coverage until they see each party’s schedule of speakers.

Some television executives say the pageantry surrounding the August nominations of President Clinton and Bob Dole is likely to stir little excitement compared with, say, the Summer Olympics.

“Most of America isn’t really watching anybody’s coverage,” said Lane Venardos, a CBS vice president. “I don’t know what you do about that, if you believe you’re putting out a quality product and have made it as interesting as you can. … You’ve got four people introducing each other for someone to make a speech that’s boring.”

There was a time when almost everyone watched the conventions, in part because they had little choice; there was nothing else on.

In 1992, convention coverage on the Big Three networks drew 31 percent of the audience, compared with 47 percent four years earlier.

Political junkies can watch all the action on CNN and C-SPAN. But Tom Hannon, CNN’s political director, concedes saturation coverage will be a challenge.

“These things have been fairly devoid of drama for about 20 years now,” he said. “They tend to be very well-orchestrated events designed to show the nominee in the best light possible.”