Radio: The Biggest Studio

TV went to Chicago armed with better makeup artists, nattier dress and more fancy electronic gadgets than ever before. The show hardly lived up to its lavish pressagentry, but TV provided the nation with the most comprehensive coverage ever accorded a national political convention. The TV was occasionally halting, windy and inaccurate, but it had its moments of high drama. More important, it was always there. Creepie-peepies and walkie-talkies manned by hard-running TV reporters−notably ABC's Ed Morgan, CBS's Dick Hottelet, NBC's Merrill Mueller−peered, poked and pried into the remotest nooks of hotel rooms, train stations, nightclubs, and the convention hall itself.

The three major networks called out their stables of old, reliable stars, and laid on a couple of new ones. CBS's veteran Walter Cronkite. working his familiar anchor spot, gave the most informed, alert and consistently lucid commentary, held up best under the week's strain. His biggest coup: getting Ave Harriman inside the fishbowl to exchange blessings with Estes Kefauver on a split-screen hookup (denounced as "electronic fakery" by rival ABC). CBS's seasoned twosome of Ed Murrow and Eric Severeid was seen only fleetingly, bantering the big picture with the casualness of network executives at a ball game.

Runners-up in the honors department: NBC's able Chet Huntley and young (36), deadpan David Brinkley, who this year teamed up for the first time to add zest and drollery−a rare convention commodity−to the otherwise dull goings-on. Occasionally this new NBC team even had the edge on the traditionally good CBS reporting staff.

ABC's anchorman, John (What's My Line?) Daly, made a virtue out of his chain's relative poverty (less gadgetry, smaller staff) by sticking with the action on the platform while the other webs cast about for sideshow pickups. Daly was the only anchorman who could actually see the convention from his box (the others watched it over monitor screens). ABC highlight: bulldogging Martin Agronsky corralling top delegates for debate, and consistently managing to make sense out of them.

Trivia & Fluffs. As always, the ubiquitous TV reporters caught some memorable glimpses: the unchivalrous disinterest of newspaper-reading delegates on ladies' day; NBC's pickup of the small but illuminating drama of Adlai Stevenson's reception for Mrs. Roosevelt; Bess Truman, behind dark glasses, nudging Harry in the ribs for speaking out of turn; bottle-bald Sam Rayburn (who did not submit to a dulling topsoil application of orange powder this time, as he did the last) threatening to shoot an admonishing finger right through the little glass screens in U.S. living rooms; the grin spreading across H. V. Kaltenborn's face as he watched Harry Truman (on film) impersonate Kaltenborn's clipped commentary in the 1948 elections (later, at Perle Mesta's wingding, Kaltenborn did an impersonation of Truman impersonating Kaltenborn).