Television: The Electronic Olympics

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Despite their energetic coverage, the general role of the networks at political conventions has in some ways become disturbing. Whereas they once moved in and televised conventions like any other major news event (1948, 1952), they have now become so much a part of the scene and a source of the show that they are really participating as well as reporting. They cover the convention and they cover themselves too.

Often they show little respect for the politicians who are supposed to be the central figures of the meeting. While Everett Dirksen was nominating Barry Goldwater, both Cronkite and Huntley interspersed their own voices, passing comments and judgments on what Dirksen was saying, not giving the man a chance to deliver his speech as a whole. The networks often cut away from speeches in midsentence, or ignored them altogether, on the assumption that their own material was more interesting than what they had come to cover.

Hopeful BB. The networks have also to a considerable extent shut out the great ground-swelling noises of the convention hall. Sound is half the atmosphere there, and it is thick enough to cut, but TV merely cuts it off or down, protecting its commentators but depriving TV audiences of the convention's overbearing sense of commotion.* When Governor Rockefeller was loudly booed as he spoke last week, the booing was almost imperceptible.

The networks apparently see no difference between coverage of a convention and an election. In November, all they have to deal with is an incoming tumble of numbers, and the analytical function of the anchor men is central. They are the center of the stage. Unfortunately, they arrogate to themselves the same importance at conventions, upstaging the assembled party.

At earlier conventions, mobile crews brilliantly covered corridor intrigues and kingmaking sessions in sequestered hotel rooms; but it had long been obvious that there would be none of that this year. The most important aspect of the convention last week was missed almost completely by the networks. Spending all their time fussing over the latest developments among the sorry pack of obvious also-rans, they made no real attempt to concentrate on the man who had the nomination sewed up from the start. The TV coverage before the first ballot was largely focused on Scranton, who was clearly firing a BB at a battleship. Goldwater himself was unavailable, but the networks' roving floor reporters should have spent at least half their time talking to the swarming delegates who had come to nominate him, having them explain in their own terms why they were resolved to do it.