‘Nightline’ to Devote Mondays to Election
Beginning tonight through Election Day, ABC’s “Nightline” will devote each Monday-night broadcast to the race for President, with political analyst Jeff Greenfield anchoring.
The plan, a reprise of what ABC did in 1988, represents the only regularly scheduled program devoted exclusively to the campaign on any of the three major broadcast networks. CNN has a half-hour program, “Inside Politics ‘92,” that airs weekdays at 1:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.
Greenfield said that he intends to begin each program by briefly establishing where the race stands--”We will kiss off the horse race early”--and then will focus on some concern about the campaign that is not covered in the nightly news or elsewhere on television.
One example, Greenfield suggested in an interview, might be: “Who are the Clinton Republicans?”
“Four years ago, Bush got all the Republican voters, virtually, and about a quarter of Democrats,” he explained. “This year so far, Clinton is getting all the Democrats and about a quarter of the Republicans. Who are the defecting Republicans? Are they all suburban, affluent women who are (angry over) the choice issue? Are they business people who think enough’s enough and they’ve got to try something different? It may be that it’s the remnant of liberal Republicanism that has no real voice in choosing candidates.”
A third segment will feature some element of the race that people haven’t seen--such as “an unusually interesting comment. If someone says something particularly eloquent or maybe non-eloquent. It might be the best one-liners of the week, either from comedians or maybe the candidates.”
CNN’s “Inside Politics ‘92,” which has been on for months, is more of a straight-news program that covers the latest developments in the race that day, reports on the polls, scrutinizes ads and then usually includes a debate by guests over some issue of the moment.
CNN also has a weekly series focusing on presidential politics, “Campaign USA ‘92,” which can be seen Sundays at 6:30 p.m.
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