COMMENTARY
Going back-to-back and mano a mano
By Roger Catlin
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They won't have thousands of drummers or lip-synching little girls. Instead, some nifty balloon drops, no doubt.
But the two parties' political conventions, running back-to-back the next two weeks from Denver and St. Paul, Minn., will represent the Olympics of American politics — and already are being advertised as such by MSNBC — insofar as TV news coverage is concerned.
The three major broadcast networks are dispatching top anchors and political teams to present, for the most part, hour-long reports at 10 nightly, covering the major speeches.
PBS is alone among broadcasters going with gavel-togavel nightly coverage. And cable news networks, who have seen boosts in ratings because of increased interest in the presidential campaigns that produced presumptive nominees Barack Obama and John McCain, are going all out once more with a mix of convention-floor reporting and other on-site coverage.
While such an approach may please political junkies, "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric says it's time to remind viewers of the personalities involved and the issues. Unlike journalists, she says, "A lot of people are not completely obsessed with the election, and I think it's time to refresh people's memories."
Speaking over the phone while on vacation Wednesday before the Democratic National Convention begins tomorrow in Denver, Couric said the 10 p.m. telecasts will largely be made up of the chief speeches of the night, "and time restrictions are pretty obvious in terms of 'Evening News.' "
That's why she's starting, for the first time, an Internet-only webcast nightly at 11 on CBSNews.com and CNET.com. at both conventions.
"I'm really excited about it," Couric says of the webcast. "It will be fun and liberating."
And it will be closer to her vision of the "CBS Evening News" when she took over in 2005.
"I definitely came over with the notion of, not revolutionizing evening news, but changing it up some and making it less formulaic," she says. The program has since "gone back to a much more traditional newscast, which is perhaps what longtime viewers at that particular hour are interested in," she said.
In the webcast, she and members of her political team, led by Jeff Greenfield and Bob Schieffer, will discuss the day's events in a relaxed style.
"I think a Web audience is much more used to a more unvarnished, casual approach," Couric says. "It's quite liberating in the way that you present news and information in a style that's more conversational and loosey-goosey, if you will."
And there will be plenty to talk about, Greenfield said.
"In both conventions, I would guess roughly half the delegates wanted somebody else," he said. So special attention will be paid, he said, to "whether or not those delegates express unhappiness or lack of enthusiasm" with what goes on.
Once, so little went on at a political convention that the anchorman of ABC's "Nightline" famously walked out.
"In 1996, I walked out of the Republican convention in San Diego, pointing out that it was really nothing much more than a picture show and there wasn't any news happening," Ted Koppel said via satellite at a press tour, where he was representing his latest client, "BBC World News America," for which he'll be providing political analysis. "I don't think anyone can make that observation about this year. This has been one of the most remarkable political years we've ever seen."
Chris Wallace of Fox News agrees. "First of all, you're going to have John McCain trying to become the oldest person ever to be elected to a first term as president, who spent 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war in a camp, who was left for dead last year when his campaign basically lost all of its staff, all of its money, all of its organization, and through a triumph of human determination and grit, he's going to go out there on the stage and receive the Republican nomination.
"And at this point, despite all the talk and hype about Obama, the fact is if you believe the polls, it's basically a dead heat. I don't think we've had a more dramatic election in recent years in terms of the difference on issues," Wallace says. "I don't think we're going to have any problem getting people to want to watch it."
That makes it all the more sad that NBC and its cable offshoot MSNBC, which has been positioning itself as a nearly allpolitics news network, will be without Tim Russert, the network's Washington bureau chief and "Meet the Press" host who died of a heart attack on June 13.
NBC News chief Steve Capus says Russert "spent an awful lot of time talking about this incredible story that's playing out for us. And Tim had this incredible boyish enthusiasm about this campaign in particular. And it's a real tragedy not to have Tim here."
As it did in 2004, CNN plans to do most of its reporting outside the "hermetically sealed anchor booth," says Washington Bureau Chief David Bohrman. Cable news will be able to provide more than just the major speeches the networks will be covering at 10 p.m.
CNN anchorman Wolf Blitzer says, "We're not going to simply be stenographers and just allow all the speeches to go on without any interruption. When there's something interesting happening, when somebody interesting is speaking, we'll take that live, but we're not going to go overboard."
The main problem for all the networks is that the two conventions will run back-to-back.
"The Olympics have compressed the conventions together, and we pretty much have to build two separate operations," said CNN's Bohrman.
It's especially hard on small organizations covering the conventions, such as Comedy Central's "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart."
"It takes everything we have to travel the show to one city," Stewart said in June. "We've never traveled two weeks in a row. It will be very fun and everything but quite possibly, we'll not be able to do it."
Roger Catlin writes for the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service. This commentary appeared in the Hartford (Conn.) Courant.