Medium over Tedium

Antennas sprouting from the backs of their heads, huge earphones obviously linking them directly with Big Brother, they clearly dominated last week's Republican Convention--and the men they interviewed knew it. They had no hesitation in cutting off, say, Massachusetts Senator Edward Brooke in mid-thought with an authoritative "Excuse me, there is a signal from the anchor desk." From the Olympus of air-conditioned booths cantilevered above the convention floor, their colleagues, the TV pundits, looked down on the delegates with detachment and sometimes disdain, commenting with urbane coolness on the proceedings.

Four years ago, even the politicians agreed that convention coverage had become something of a bore. When it came right down to the wire, however, they found old habits hard to discard, including the absurdity of four seconding speeches even for favorite-son candidates. All the Republican National Committee had really done was to delay the proceedings until prime time and to limit the seconding speeches for candidates to five minutes. The net works found themselves reporting a spectacle whose script they were basically powerless to enliven. As NBC's John Chancellor noted in retrospect: "Conventions were structured and their main patterns made up when people got their information from newspapers. Today we are seeing something that was made for a newspaper age that has survived into a TV age."

Still, however oldfashioned, the conventions are quintessential television--history happening. Or at least for brief moments. The networks' challenge was to remain compelling in the hours between the moments. That challenge was considerable. What other show, after all, could run for several hours with a single set, no sex, a predictable plot, and its principal characters all offstage?

Circus Side. NBC this year took a hard-news approach. The only real news, the network obviously decided, was the shifting of votes between Front Runner Nixon and his opposition. But since there was very little "erosion," as possible vote shifts were invariably called, NBC viewers had to watch two days of model reporting in pursuit of a nonstory. CBS, on the other hand, tended to cover voting trends offscreen. Canvassing every single delegate, some since February, the network organized a running "CBS News Delegate Count." Since all that produced on the air was the latest totals,* CBS could devote more time to the circus side of the convention and diverting side bars.

ABC, historically No. 3 in news budget and ratings, tried the most novel approach. Forsaking gavel-to-gavel coverage, it opted for a nightly 90-minute wrap-up of the day's proceedings. While the opposition networks were carrying the early hours of the convention, ABC viewers saw Rat Patrol, Garrison's Gorillas, or an old Jerry Lewis movie. Simultaneously, of course, ABC cameramen were taping the minute-by-minute events on the floor and around town. This footage was quickly edited into an "instant special," which went on at 9:30 p.m. local time. The opening night's 90 minutes, for example, were culled from some 24 hours of film and videotape. In general ABC's unconventional coverage did not evoke the flavor of the convention or impart any sense of urgency. And on the two balloting nights, of course, ABC had no choice but to go overtime. Still, the ABC experiment cut to the very nature of the TV medium. Unlike print, television does not lend itself readily to organizing, tabulating and editing. In trying to substitute these disciplines for TV's usually half-formed rush of life, ABC failed--but further experimentation may be instructive.

One of the year's major departures was the sideshow. CBS hired Columnist Art Buchwald in hopes of bringing humor to the proceedings, but during most of his appearances he seemed much less effective than in print. In one sketch, though, while playing an uncommitted delegate wooed by party girls at a hotel pool, Art got off his best line: "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the cabana." ABC scheduled nightly debates between the self-styled "Odd Couple," Conservative Editor William Buckley Jr. and Novelist Gore Vidal, whose latest book is the sex farce, Myra Breckinridge. The confrontation was diverting as an exhibition of personal antagonism, but the political issues were almost entirely lost in the scuffle. A sample exchange:

Buckley: I don't think it is right to present Mr. Gore Vidal as a political commentator of any consequence, since he is nothing more than a literary producer of perverted Hollywood-minded prose.

Vidal: Mr. Buckley, with his enormous and thrilling charm, manages to get away from the issues. You certainly must maintain yourself, Bill, to be the Marie Antoinette of the right wing.

Feeding on Themselves. What ultimately separated the networks, of course, was the performance of their regulars. ABC staffers were the least authoritative and articulate. NBC, with its emphasis on the machinations of the floor, played down Anchormen Chet Huntley and David Brinkley and gave the ball to its fearsome foursome of floor reporters: John Chancellor, Frank McGee, Edwin Newman and Sander Vanocur. In the continuing absence of actual news, they desperately darted from delegation to delegation, chasing down the rumors that are always the prime medium of convention exchange. TV in general not only enabled rumors to feed on themselves but tended to make much of flurries that had subsided by the time TV got around to reporting them. Of all the floor men, CBS's Mike Wallace was the fastest on his feet, beating his rivals to the right politician time after time.

CBS's, and television's, star of the week, though, was Anchorman Walter Cronkite. It was sweet vindication. In 1964, when the CBS news rating fell off, the panic-stricken network jettisoned him between conventions. This year, keeping on a "low-residue diet, a trick I learned from the astronauts," and forsaking his pipe to keep his throat moist, Cronkite stayed on top of the story all week. He constantly re-queried his field men when he thought they did not question pungently enough. He got off his share of quips. He correctly forecast, for example, that the nominating speech for Senator Hiram Fong "will tell us more than we want to know about Hawaii." And, in 35 hours on the anchor watch, Cronkite committed only one embarrassing blooper by confusing Crooner Tony Martin with Tony Bennett.

In the desperate dull hours, the networks took capital advantage of their new photographic mobility, straying away from the rostrum some 70% of the air time. Miami Beach Police Chief Rocky Pomerance ordered his troops to beware of scratching their noses, but no one warned the delegates.

CBS picked up some of the most telling reaction shots--Pat Nixon staring cold-eyed when a nominator mentioned Nelson Rockefeller's undefeated election record, Ronald Reagan's mother-in-law chanting "We want Reagan!" ABC also had its moments with a couple of prefilmed reports, including the only network penetration into a caucus (Idaho) and into the Nixon command trailer, which resembled a bookie joint.

Tribute to TV. If at various times the show was a bore, it was not the fault of television but of the politicians. In fact, it is a kind of tribute to television that it does indeed convey how a convention is--a place of ritualized oratory, stupefying boredom, enormous apathy. If television's men did not get all the smoke-filled-room secrets, they got more than any single delegate did. In fact, an astute spectator would have been well advised to carry with him a portable TV set. It would have told him more about what was going on than anything he could have concluded by just being there.

*CBS predicted Nixon's first ballot victory at 5:36 p.m. on nominating day, earlier than either wire service.

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