Networks Tuning Out Conventions

In the lore of television news, no image is quite like that of NBC’s John Chancellor being arrested and dragged off the floor of the raucous 1964 Republican National Convention, signing off with, “This is John Chancellor, somewhere in custody.”

Those were the glory days for television news staffs, when the networks trotted out their rising stars to spend hours showing a vast national audience how democracy worked.

This August, the stars will be lucky to get a few glory minutes.

As of now, network executives plan to winnow down their live coverage of the conventions as never before. Although still subject to change as the parties devise their slates of speakers, prime-time coverage of the four-day events on NBC may consist of a single night. Network executives so far have committed only to airing the acceptance speeches of the presidential nominees as the conventions close on Thursday nights.

CBS officials have committed to prime-time coverage of two nights--the acceptance speeches on Thursday and the official nominating process the night before.

ABC plans at least some live reporting each night, but on the opening Mondays of each convention the coverage may occur only during the halftime of preseason professional football games.

As the networks retreat from political coverage, 24-hour cable news channels have eagerly filled the void. CNN, for example, intends to start its on-location coverage four days in advance of each event, with plans to air more than nine hours a day of convention programming. MSNBC, the cable outlet co-owned by NBC, is planning to showcase the broadcast network’s stars in its own extensive coverage leading up to, and through, the Republican convention in Philadelphia, to be held the first week in August, and the Democratic gathering in Los Angeles, taking place the third week in August.

The cable outlets “see a vacuum created that they can fill; it’s a niche they exist for,” said Zachary Karabell, author of a recent book about the 1948 presidential campaign, the last one before most Americans owned television sets.

But there’s a dramatic disparity in the viewership of broadcast television and that of cable. The networks’ evening news broadcasts draw about 10 million viewers each. By comparison, an average of 624,000 people watch CNN in prime time and about 240,000 tune into MSNBC, according to season-to-date data compiled by Nielsen Media Research.

Even if viewership of these cable outlets soars during the conventions, the networks’ decision to keep paring back their convention coverage leaves no viewing alternative for the estimated 32% of the country’s households that don’t have cable.

For that segment of the population, the only available 24-hour coverage of the conventions will be on PBS. But PBS draws a far smaller audience than the commercial networks--its average prime-time rating this season is 2.1. Each ratings point is equal to 1% of all U.S. homes.

A study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press also shows the population without cable is slightly poorer, with 31% of them making under $30,000 a year, compared to 28% of the audience watching both broadcast and cable.

“The effect [of the networks’ decision] is sending a signal that things have changed: We’re not all in the same electronic town square we once were,” said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew center. “They’re cutting off information for people who have less choice to begin with because of their socioeconomic status.”

Among the reasons cited by network executives for the coverage cutbacks: the lack of suspense over who the nominees will be, the plummeting viewership of conventions over the last several elections, the need to rein in spending and the competition from cable news outlets.

“It simply no longer makes sense for a commercial broadcaster to preempt its prime-time programming” for the conventions, said Marc Burstein, executive producer of special events for ABC News. “It’s not what we do in the year 2000 for a non-news event.”

The networks’ plans could change depending on the conventions’ lineup of speakers.

“We reserve every right,” Burstein said. “We’re going to make the decision on the news value.”

To some veteran television journalists, however, the shift away from convention coverage suggests the networks are basing news decisions on ratings and financial impact.

In the 1960s and ‘70s, “It was an assumed fact that we were going to cover the conventions for four days. No one raised a question about it,” said Marvin Kalb, a former correspondent for CBS and NBC. “Now, because of ratings and money, the vision is skewed.”

Added Karabell: “It’s a ratings game. If the networks can get substantially more viewers with ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,’ then economic prudence dictates you have to do that.”

NBC Vice President Bill Wheatley argues the rise of cable outlets and Internet sites has caused the network audience to fracture, resulting in a decline in ratings for political events. Conversely, such events raise viewership on cable channels and PBS.

But Nielsen data show broadcast networks’ ratings for the conventions have been slipping gradually since the 1960s, long before the advent of cable or home computers.

In 1960, the networks drew a combined rating of 29.2 for the Democratic convention and 28.0 for the GOP convention.

But the steady decline in viewership began later that decade. By 1996, even after adding in the audience of CNN and PBS, ratings for the conventions had dropped to 17.2 for the Democrats and 16.5 for the Republicans. Based on last summer’s ratings, the networks could outdraw its convention coverage with a rerun of “Law & Order” or “48 Hours.”

In 1952, the first election year in which television sets had become commonplace, the networks televised more than 57.5 hours from the GOP event and 61.1 hours from the Democrats’, more hours than the conventions were actually in session, according to TV historians.

While the conventions immediately started becoming more choreographed to suit television, the networks embraced them as vital news stories, offering gavel-to-gavel coverage. But in 1968, ABC began cutting back the hours it devoted to the conventions, and the other two networks followed suit as the nominating process lost its drama.

In the 1980s, the networks aired from 10 to 20 hours of each convention. In 1996, the networks each offered only 60 to 90 minutes of prime-time coverage each night. Ted Koppel of ABC’s “Nightline” even left in the middle of the GOP convention, saying it was “more of an infomercial than a news event.”

It is these trends that have put the networks on the verge of abandoning nightly coverage of the events altogether.

“You do have to look at each day on its own merits,” said CBS spokeswoman Sandra Genelius. “We’re not in the infomercial business.”

Still, network executives add they will be flexible if the parties roll out potentially big draws, such as Clinton or Nancy Reagan, to speak on a particular night. And convention planners already are seeking to whet an appetite for more coverage. Aides to presumed Republican nominee George W. Bush have said Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who became a national figure with his surprisingly strong primary challenge to the Texas governor, will likely have a prime-time speaking slot on the convention’s Tuesday night lineup.

No matter the final schedules, however, the only broadcast network expected to carry all of the convention events live is PBS.

Jim Lehrer, PBS’ anchor and executive editor, said he views broadcasting the full conventions as a public service for viewers. “If you start using entertainment value in deciding whether to cover a major public affairs event, you start going down a road [toward] an uninformed electorate, and that bothers me.”

But Wheatley of NBC dismissed the notion that voters necessarily benefit from full convention coverage.

“I think what’s an important event for the country is the [nominees’] speeches,” Wheatley said. “A lot of the rest is simply staged political theater.”

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Times staff writer Brian Lowry contributed to this story.