Newscasting: Medium over Tedium

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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.