2004 Conventions May Run Longer as Focus Shifts to Cable, Local TV

The chairmen of the Democratic and Republican parties said Friday that their next national conventions in 2004 will likely be tailored for local television more than the national networks--and may last even longer than they do now.

After months of lobbying the networks for prime-time hours only to win the smallest amount of coverage since the television age began, the two party chairmen said, in effect, that history is passing the networks by--that local outlets and cable channels are more effective media for their messages.

Democratic National Chairman Joe Andrew said future conventions might outlast the current four days to give candidates for the White House, Congress and state offices more access to hundreds of local media outlets.

Conventions are the “most cost effective, least expensive” way to reach large numbers of Americans, Andrew said, because local news outlets have given politicians more tailored outlets for their message.

The two party leaders’ post-mortems--which they offered independently--heralded a new step in the long evolution of national political conventions. They shed their roles as decision-making meetings long ago and are turning away from their aim as national television events to become festivals of “narrowcasting”--targeted media events for candidates at every level.

“I think they are going to move from being just an organizational tool for parties to [being] a content provider on the candidate,” Andrew said at a meeting wrapping up the Democratic National Convention, which ended at Staples Center Thursday night.

Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson said his party, too, found that cable and local broadcasters were eager consumers for convention news, and said a longer convention was worth considering.

“We certainly still want the major networks in there, even though they’ve pulled back,” Nicholson said in a telephone interview. “[But] we’ve made up for it with the new emphasis on cable and on local television, and certainly radio.

“I certainly am open-minded to a different formatting, you bet,” he said. “I indeed think we should examine the formatting to try to make the convention as relevant and as enjoyable to the American public--that’s our customer--as we can.”

GOP officials considered shortening the traditional four-day format of their convention this year but decided against cutting any time, he said--partly because of the interest in coverage by local television and radio stations. The Republican convention was held in Philadelphia July 31 to Aug. 3.

All three major networks reduced their coverage this year, and one, NBC, broadcast nothing at all from the conventions on one of their four nights--a decision that was widely criticized both inside and outside the network.

ABC broadcast the most convention coverage of the three: a total of about three hours from the Republican convention and three hours, 47 minutes from the Democrats. Gavel-to-gavel coverage was the norm from 1952 through 1976.

Network news executives said extending the length of the conventions--which many programmers already consider too long and boring to attract a mass audience--struck them as a bad idea.

ABC News executive vice president Paul Friedman called Andrew’s suggestion of a longer convention “the funniest thing I’ve heard in a long time.” He said his network’s commitment of time “felt about right, and even a little less would probably be fine too.”

NBC News executive vice president Bill Wheatley said he, too, would prefer shorter, not longer. “If they continue to do four-day conventions, they risk further cutbacks in network coverage,” he said. “We wish that more people were interested.”

More Emphasis on Non-Network Outlets

But convention planners in both parties indicated that the networks’ needs aren’t quite as central to the parties’ goals as they once were.

“We had 247 speakers,” Andrew said. “We extended the length of each day and we were able to have local speakers from local markets up on stage talking about specific issues of importance for them. BET [Black Entertainment Television] had 10 times as much coverage than before. Univision [a Spanish-language network] tripled their coverage.”

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, said politicians have been drawn to local outlets because their audiences are growing while network audiences shrink--and, besides, “It’s good politics.”

“If you look at patterns of news viewership, local news is where the action is,” she said.

“Local news time is, in general, less critical. Local news reporters, unlike the national press corps, . . . allow the content to come through without adding a dose of cynicism and without looking automatically to balance it.”

Candidates Eager to Talk on Local TV

Local broadcasts are politically more effective, she added, because they link the presidential ticket to local concerns and local candidates. “They let you address local issues and build loyalty among people who have real coattails,” she said.

That’s why both presidential candidates constantly grant interviews to local television stations as they travel around the country--and why dozens of local Democratic candidates used their time in Los Angeles this week to broadcast to folks back home.

One of those was Rep. Ron Klink (D-Pa.), running for a GOP-held Senate seat, who rose from his bed at the Omni Hotel downtown at 1:30 one morning to go to the Democratic convention hall at Staples Center at 3 a.m. Why? To hit the 6 a.m. show, Eastern time, on a station in Johnstown-Altoona, one of Pennsylvania’s medium-sized television markets.

“A lot of stations gave us coverage here that wouldn’t give me the time of day if I was back home,” said Klink, a former local television weatherman and anchor. “They didn’t want to miss out on the event, and since they didn’t have a reporter here, this was a way to get some access to what’s going on.”

Klink also spoke from the podium of the convention at a more civilized hour on Wednesday afternoon. His audience was a half-empty hall of inattentive delegates. plus a small knot of cheering Pennsylvanians, but it made nice video clips for stations back home.

That kind of exposure for local candidates is one of several reasons the national conventions, derided as dinosaurs by some onlookers, are unlikely to become extinct any time soon.

“We’ve had four satellites in nonstop use,” boasted Jim Jordan, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which helps Senate challengers. “I had candidates who sent back 12 or 15 spots, who did live interviews with local anchors, morning shows, drive-time radio. This is the one time that political news gets on a lot of local outlets.”

Jamieson agreed. “The pundit class says these conventions are obsolete, that people aren’t paying attention,” she said. “But they are wrong. Most people may not be watching the whole proceedings live, but they are learning about it--from local news shows, from radio, from word-of-mouth. The conventions are still a great communication device.”

Not everyone in politics is convinced that the conventions need to be as long as they are. “Is this really the most efficient way to achieve our purposes?” asked Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.). “If everybody spent the hours they spent here registering voters instead, we’d be a lot closer to winning. I wonder if 30 years from now we’ll still be doing this.”

But most expect to be back four years from now at an event that looks a lot like this year’s, with new media but the same old rituals, for one simple reason: it works.

“Conventions are no longer a decision-making place; they are a launch pad,” said Kenneth M. Duberstein, a former Reagan aide. “They are the political equivalent of Cape Canaveral. And for both candidates this year, they did what they needed to do.”

As for shorter conventions, one expert said, forget about it.

“You could do it in two days,” said Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, who was chairman of the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1996. “But the host cities won’t let you. They insist on all four.”

* This story was reported by Times staff writers Richard T. Cooper, Megan Garvey, Jack Nelson and Massie Ritsch.