San Diego Convention
Will Be Scripted for TV
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 10, 1996. Page A12
It is the political convention as TV miniseries, a postmodern
attempt to transform the windy oratory of the past into bite-sized
morsels digestible by an audience of channel-surfers.
When the prime-time curtain rises Monday on the Republican
National Convention, the party's strategists will be trying to beat
the networks at their own game. They are staging a fast-paced
program, replete with cutaways, taped segments and slick
videos, in an effort to maximize air time for their partisan
message. With a few exceptions, no politician will speak for
more than five minutes.
This attempt to choreograph the coverage of Robert J. Dole's
nomination in San Diego has sparked a backlash from network
executives who worry about being used.
"I feel slightly soiled even before we get there," ABC anchor
Peter Jennings said yesterday. "They are so open about using us
to present a show. That is not our job. We are vigorously
resistant to being part of an infomercial. I think there will be a lot
of tension."
"They might be doing themselves some fatal damage," Tom
Hannon, CNN's political director, said from San Diego. "If
they're going to put an emphasis on TV production values and
change this into a TV program, they really undercut the reason
we spend millions of dollars and send hundreds of people here to
cover it."
On the contrary, Republican National Committee Chairman
Haley Barbour said yesterday, "this will be more issue-oriented
than any convention before . . . but it has to be fast-paced and
entertaining in order to get people to watch it. I would think the
networks would think that's good. A lot of the information will be
imparted through video because it can be imparted more
succinctly, more clearly and more efficiently, just as CBS, NBC
and ABC do in their own newscasts."
Not all Republicans agree. William Kristol, a GOP strategist
and editor of the Weekly Standard, accused party officials of
"dumbing down the convention" by thinking like "a sitcom
producer. . . . There's not even a pretense that there's going to be
any articulation of ideas and issues."
Some network executives welcomed the emphasis on brevity.
No longer will they be forced to scramble for alternative fare as
in 1988, when Bill Clinton uncorked a 32-minute nominating
speech for Michael S. Dukakis.
"The idea of five-minute speeches is a good one," said CBS vice
president Lane Venardos. "A lot of these speeches in the past
have been really boring. People tune in, and if they don't see
anything to which they can relate, they tune out."
Republican officials say they are merely accommodating the
realities of television. With ABC, CBS and NBC limiting
themselves to one hour of coverage most nights, the days when
party functionaries could drone on before a national audience are
long gone.
Paul Manafort, the convention manager, said that "conventions
haven't changed . . . in 100 years. They are meetings organized
for the people in the hall. It should be more of a political dialogue
with the American people. . . . What we're organizing is what I'd
call political programming for television."
Assisting Manafort in the convention planning, Republican
officials said, is Michael K. Deaver, the former White House aide
who stage-managed some of the most memorable visuals of the
Reagan presidency.
Deaver was sentenced to three years' probation in 1988 for lying
to Congress and a grand jury about his lobbying activities but has
since undergone something of a rehabilitation and is regarded by
the party hierarchy as a seasoned image-maker.
Manafort reasoned that the networks need time at the beginning
and end of each hour for their anchors and commentators to chat
with each other. Along with commercial breaks, that leaves
roughly 45 minutes of available time. Thus, Manafort is including
about 15 minutes of marginal material each hour in hopes that the
networks will carry the presentations most important to the party.
These will be organized in 10- to 12-minute "viewer-friendly"
blocks built around a single issue, with each speaker limited to
that subject. A podium speech on education reform might be
followed by remote interviews with teachers and a video of a
school where GOP policies are working, all very much like the
news programs the networks are accustomed to airing.
"I was stunned to hear Manafort, in a background briefing with
us, describe the delegates as merely audience," Jennings said.
"There's a certain cynicism in what Manafort and others have
said. They have never gone as far before as planning our
commercial breaks. It's uncomfortable."
Jim Lehrer, who will co-anchor PBS's coverage with NBC,
disagreed. "We have an old-fashioned view that the convention is
what the convention is," he said. "If it's a love fest, it will be seen
as a love fest. If it's brittle and difficult, that's how it will come off.
We're not going to look for opportunities to go away from the
convention. We're not in the entertainment business."
Venardos said the GOP planners are right that "we have to have
a chance to introduce ourselves. You can't come on and say, `Hi,
I'm Dan, here's the podium.' . . . How they schedule the events is
obviously a factor in deciding what to carry."
The new approach will debut Monday, when the lineup will mix
delegates and private citizens with such luminaries as former
presidents George Bush and Gerald R. Ford, retired Gen. Colin
L. Powell and former first lady Nancy Reagan, with Ronald
Reagan appearing on videotape. The videos present a particular
problem for the networks.
"We can't be on the floor if they turn off the lights to show
videos, and they're doing 15 to 20 videos a night," Hannon said.
Conventions have had little real suspense for 25 years, with
nominees chosen months earlier and platform disputes smoothed
over before the TV lights come on. No political party wants a
replay of the 1972 Democratic National Convention, where
warring factions delayed George McGovern's acceptance speech
until long after most viewers had gone to bed.
The Republicans' tightly packaged, carefully scripted format
represents the culmination of Barbour's television-oriented
approach. He has invested millions of dollars in GOP-TV, a
satellite operation designed to impart the Republican spin while
looking like a high-tech newscast. GOP-TV is buying time for its
convention coverage on the Family Channel and USA Network.
Prominent Republicans will also be made available each day for
up to 2,000 satellite interviews with local anchors.
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