Television: The Electronic Olympics

There were Republicans there, too, but they were a minority. Specifically, the ratio was 7 to 10. The assembled G.O.P. delegates at the San Francisco convention numbered 1,308. The personnel sent by the television networks to cover the event numbered 1,825.

They covered it all right—so expansively and so expensively that it might seem picayune even to consider the mistakes they inadvertently committed along the way. But it must be understood that political conventions are the intramural Olympics of television. The networks' panoply of glimpsed emotions, analyses, quips and radioactive poop are the team points they are scoring in their decathlons with one another to see who is best. Since they are spending $25 million on political coverage this year to find out, they probably deserve the judgments they seek.

The Bird Dogs. By a hair, NBC was best, at least at the half, with the Democratic Convention still to be played. NBC owes its victory—confirmed by last week's ratings, which gave NBC a bigger share of the audience than CBS and ABC combined—to the fine and tireless work of its bird-dog reporters. Chasing candidates in hotels and delegates on the floor, walkie-talkers like John Chancellor, Edwin Newman, Frank McGee, Bob Teague and Sander Vanocur always seemed to be in the most interesting places at the most interesting times, in moments of import as well as absurdity.

Two and a half hours before the ballot, Vanocur accosted Scranton's floor manager, Pennsylvania's Senator Hugh Scott, and extracted from him remarks that were an almost overt admission that Scranton had already conceded defeat. Though reporters and delegates on the spot may have known it, the TV audience across the country did not—getting in addition a little episode of ineptitude on the part of Scott. Chancellor, on the other hand, made capital amusement out of his own arrest. Led out of the hall by a sergeant at arms for refusing to clear an aisle, he kept yattering into his walkie-talkie, assuring NBC's listeners that others would carry on in his absence, proclaiming his arrest an undignified disgrace, and signing off with "This is John Chancellor, somewhere in custody."

Pretzeled David. Even though their act is pretty much played out, NBC's Chet Huntley and David Brinkley still managed to be more diverting and amusing than the other so-called anchor men. Brinkley pretzels himself in an attempt to give the impression that he is doing his best to contain most of his natural wit, when actually he is straining to be funny. His best effort last week was his description of Illinois' Everett Dirksen as "a Shakespearean actor manque.'"