Convention coverage is cable's show this summer

By Nick Anderson
Los Angeles Times

Comedy Central's Jon Stewart will be in Boston.

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For this assignment, the 25-year-old wrestler will wear a sport coat and slacks instead of his usual TV attire: skin-tight briefs. His story angle, too, is based more on brains than brawn.

"What are they going to do to reach out to young voters in the fall?" Nowinski said he would ask Democrats.

This year as never before, the national political conventions will connect with Americans through cable TV. Some conduits are established news outlets, such as CNN, MSNBC and Fox News Channel. Others are known for their focus on pop music, sports or comedy. All are helping fill the void left by shrinking broadcast-network coverage of the gatherings Republicans and Democrats stage every four years.

Three of the 28 hours of the Democratic convention in Boston next week will be broadcast live on CBS, ABC and NBC, with the coverage anchored by Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw, respectively. The same slim schedule is planned when the Republicans meet in New York starting Aug. 30.

The days of gavel-to-gavel network coverage are gone, and the sagging TV ratings for the 1996 and 2000 confabs led the networks to further reduce live broadcasts this year.

"It's their decision, and there's not much more we can do about it," a Republican Party official said on condition of anonymity. "But there's so much cable now that I don't know that network coverage is as essential as it once was."

Indeed, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News Channel will have many hours of live coverage and commentary every day. C-SPAN will have cameras trained on the podiums for every minute of the proceedings, and cable channels that target minorities, such as BET, will be there.

More offbeat reports will come from ESPN, Comedy Central and MTV. And then there's World Wrestling Entertainment, which produces shows for various cable channels.

"The conventions are being offloaded to cable," said Carroll Doherty, editor of The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. For the big networks, he said, political conventions are "not a huge draw. Cable then takes over."

Studies show many Americans are migrating to cable. The Pew center reported in June that 38 percent of Americans get their news regularly from cable, compared with 34 percent who regularly watch the nightly news on the three largest networks.
 
To some degree, that finding reflects cable's specialized format. People can catch a snippet of news on cable anytime, anywhere. Nielsen ratings, however, show each of the three major network newscasts draws far more viewers than even the best-rated cable news show.

On the final night of the 2000 Democratic convention, for instance, CBS, ABC and NBC reached about 13.5 million homes, Nielsen Media Research found, while CNN, MSNBC and Fox reached about 2.5 million.

Nonetheless, cable channels will have undeniable prominence at the conventions. Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe delivered Comedy Central's convention floor pass in a recent appearance on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." A Comedy Central executive said the show did not have such access four years ago.

MTV has sent correspondents to several recent conventions and will do so again, this time adding to its on-air team Ana Marie Cox, editor of the political gossip Web site Wonkette.com.

ESPN also will send a crew to Boston in its first major effort to cover a convention. "We're going to be there and be as aggressive as anybody else," said Brian Donlon, executive producer of the sports network's morning show "Cold Pizza."

While limiting live national broadcasts, CBS, ABC and NBC are expanding coverage in some ways. ABC will cover the conventions gavel-to-gavel through a special Internet-based service that local affiliates will be able to feed through cable-TV channels. NBC will file reports through sister cable channels MSNBC and CNBC. CBS will add Webcasts.