Networks in Quandary on Bush Film

Amid lights, cameras and fears of little action, the nation’s journalistic swallows are returning to their political Capistrano--which in this case is next week’s Republican National Convention.

As delegates from ABC, CBS, NBC and Cable News Network began assembling this week to cover the convention in New Orleans, the question most asked of their leaders was: “You gonna show the Bush film?”

The common answer: “Don’t know. Haven’t seen it yet.”

That, and speculation about the vice presidential nominee, constitutes the excitement before the main event, which starts Monday at New Orleans’ Superdome with day sessions that only CNN and C-SPAN--the only TV outlets offering gavel-to-gavel coverage--will show live.

The three major networks will offer live coverage only at night, with the same schedule they used at last month’s Democratic National Convention in Atlanta--two hours on Monday through Thursday, starting at 6 p.m. PDT each night, with the exception of an additional hour from CBS at 5 p.m. Thursday.

The GOP-produced film that network officials keep getting asked about is to be shown Thursday at the convention, preceding the acceptance speech of Vice President George Bush as the party’s presidential nominee.

The Bush film, described in various accounts as from 12 to 25 minutes long, celebrates his life and career. At last month’s Democratic convention in Atlanta, Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis was the subject of a similar, albeit far shorter film.

Only CBS chose not to air the Dukakis film, contending it was little more than a campaign commercial. The network’s rivals and CNN aired it in its entirety--and CNN says it probably will do that with the Bush film too.

Lane Venardos, Joe Angotti and Jeff Gralnick, the respective heads of convention coverage for CBS, NBC and ABC, all said the Republicans have told them the Bush film won’t be ready until Thursday. Thus, they said, there will be no decision on broadcasting it until then.

The same thing happened with the Dukakis film, they noted. They didn’t get to see it until the convention’s last day, at which time CBS opted against showing it.

“I’m not here as a propaganda arm of the Democrats or the Republicans,” Venardos said. “I’m here to cover the news. . . . We’re not were to cover a tone poem to the candidates.”

Meanwhile, CBS, ABC and CNN officials also said they haven’t decided whether they’ll air another GOP film, a retrospective of President Reagan’s eight years in office that is scheduled to be shown Monday. NBC said it definitely will not.

“I don’t feel any kind of obligation to run” the Reagan film, Angotti said, “because he’s not the candidate.”

The networks, under pressure to keep costs down, last month dispatched to Atlanta half the personnel they had assembled for the conventions of 1984.

Their ranks will be even smaller for the non-battle of New Orleans--with 170 fewer workers this time. CBS and ABC each will have about 350 people there, and NBC 320.

The largest troop reduction--100--is at ABC. Half of ABC’s ranks-thinning is due to the fact that its “Nightline” show, which went to Atlanta, is staying home in Washington this time.

Executives at all three networks said that, unlike the Democratic convention, there is no need in New Orleans for the separate “remote” crews they needed in Atlanta for coverage of a second major presidential candidate, the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

Cable TV’s CNN and C-SPAN each said they’ll have the same number of staffers as they had in Atlanta--270 for CNN and 50 for C-SPAN.

Local broadcasters, whose convention-coverage ranks have been steadily increasing because of satellite technology, had the largest electronic congregation in Atlanta, with more than 4,000 reporters and crew members accredited, up 1,000 from 1984.

Once again, Tom Brokaw and John Chancellor will anchor for NBC, which was third in the ratings at the 1984 Democratic convention but first in the Nielsen averages for network coverage of this year’s Democratic gathering.

Dan Rather will again head the CBS delegation, with his anchor predecessor, Walter Cronkite, again in the commentator role he filled in Atlanta. Peter Jennings and David Brinkley will co-anchor for ABC, and Mary Alice Williams and Bernard Shaw for CNN.

Last month in Atlanta, ABC News President Roone Arledge created a stir when he was quoted as suggesting that the networks ought to sit down with the political parties and figure out a way to make their conventions more interesting to television viewers.

Such decisions, sniffed his rivals, should be up to the parties, not the journalists.

That flap was the result of a misunderstanding, Arledge said in an interview this week. A reporter had asked what if the parties wanted to talk to the networks about the problem, “and I said that’s fine, because there have been areas where we have talked to them, about debates and things like that,” he said.

“But I have not and do not advocate that we get involved with them in what conventions ought to be. . . . What I do say is that they are anachronistic and they’ve (party officials) taken all the life out of them.”

Primaries and caucuses now decide the candidates, Arledge said, and conventions offer little news. And, he added, they no longer are the quadrennial “civics lesson” that some pundits call them.

“They’ve gone so far overboard to make themselves televise-able and unified--and God forbid that any issue should arise--that there’s just less and less value to a citizen,” he said.

That being the case, what to do in 1992? Cut prime-time network coverage to an hour? Maybe just interrupt programming for major speeches, and recap each night in 30-minute specials after local stations’ news?

“I don’t know what we’re actually going to do,” Arledge said. “But two things are clear. One is that networks have a public responsibility, and I don’t think anyone is arguing that it isn’t a wonderful opportunity to expose the political process to the public and get the people involved in it.

“But if the parties don’t do something, they’re defeating that very end. . . . Clearly what we’re doing now is not what it ought to be.”

Two newly commissioned network news presidents--CBS’ David Burke and NBC’s Michael G. Gartner--will be in New Orleans, watching their staffs at work.

Gartner, a respected former newspaper editor and executive who never before has worked in TV news, said the convention will be more of the total immersion in TV journalism he began Aug. 1 after being named to succeed Lawrence K. Grossman. (Burke, formerly Arledge’s second-in-command at ABC News, also took up his new post at CBS Aug. 1, but wasn’t available for an interview this week.)

Gartner declined to comment on TV coverage of the conventions, specifically that of the Democratic convention, which he attended as a news executive of his former employer, the Gannett Co.

“I just don’t know and I don’t have a perspective because I watched very little of it on television,” he said. He laughed. “I happened to watch Clinton’s speech, and I fell asleep.”

He referred to Arkansas Gov. William Clinton, whose nominating speech for Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis ran long and was widely criticized for being dull.

“I don’t think you can predict what can happen four years from now,” Gartner said when asked about the future of convention coverage by the networks.

“There may be a hell of a fight. It might be the major news story of 1992. It’s treacherous to start talking about future coverage when you don’t know what the facts are.”