The Tedium Is the Message

One evening this week, as delegates to the Democratic National Convention work out the party's platform over prime-time television, as many as 60 million Americans will be riveted to their sets. Most of those citizens, however, will not be watching democracy in action at Madison Square Garden, but the Major League All-Stars in action at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. The three major networks will together be spending more than $12 million to win viewers to their convention coverage this week, but that event promises to be TV's biggest white elephant (or donkey) since --well, since the 1972 conventions.

Part of the problem is Jimmy Carter, whose early capture of the Democratic presidential nomination removed virtually all suspense from the convention, except perhaps for the vice-presidential selection. Another reason will be ABC's offer of an alternative. Since 1968, the network has rejected gavel-to-gavel coverage in favor of a couple of hours of filmed and taped highlights and late-night live action. "Edited coverage," network officials call that abbreviated schedule, and at the last Democratic convention it paid off well. While CBS and NBC were carrying the usual speeches, floor demonstrations and mid-aisle interviews, ABC won half again as many viewers as either competitor by showing such drivel as The Mod Squad, The Super and Corner Bar. Despite that lead, ABC trailed the other networks in ratings during the late-evening hours, when all three focused on the convention: NBC won 8.2% of TV households, v. 7.5% for CBS and 4.5% for ABC.

This year that gap could be closed. Viewers have a tendency to stay tuned for the news and public affairs offerings of whatever network they are already watching, and ABC's prime-time preconvention lineup this week is more flashily apolitical than ever: Bionic Woman, Let's Make a Deal, Wild, Wild World of Animals--as well as the All-Star Game.

ABC officials vehemently deny that their selective coverage is motivated by a hunger for higher ratings. "It's about time the conventions were covered like a news story, not a pageant," says Walter J. Pfister Jr., vice president for special television news programs. "We try to cover the convention the way you would edit a newspaper." For viewers who recall the long-winded platform debates and seconding speeches of previous conventions, that approach makes good sense.

Rival television journalists, however, note that ABC will not be editing its coverage of the All-Star Game as a newspaper would, and that the whole idea of a condensed, carefully packaged convention program smacks of show business. "I think the convention is one of the grand opportunities for live television," CBS Anchor Man Walter Cronkite told TIME's Sally Bedell. "We should let it unfold before our eyes and see it without the intercession of an editor's scissors." Says NBC Producer Les Crystal: "The convention should be treated as a story, not a program."

Four Horsepersons. Either way, the networks will have to hustle to hold a crowd that already knows who the winner at Madison Square Garden will be. To add some contentiousness, ABC has signed up Senator Barry Goldwater as a commentator (Senator George McGovern will play a similar role at the Republican convention). ABC already has a drawerful of short (less than four minutes), filmed feature stories on such topics as Jimmy Carter's advisers, a smalltown delegate's impressions of New York City, and the nightmarish 1924 convention, for use when tedium swamps the podium. CBS has a smaller collection of prepackaged material, though for the first time the network is eschewing film for the seemingly greater immediacy of videotape.

Each of the networks has instructed its allotted quartet of floor reporters --known among colleagues as "the four horsepersons"--to keep an eye cocked for offbeat background stories. "I'd like to explain the process by which the Democratic candidate sewed up the nomination and the party before the convention," says Tom Pettit, one of NBC'S floor reporters.* Promises ABC'S Ann Compton: "The delegates used to be faceless people in straw hats, but this year we're going to find out why they are voting the way they do."

Some of the week's most unusual convention action may come when the dozen network floor reporters--accompanied by cameramen, relief correspondents and producers--slug it out with 3,000 other journalists and 5,000 delegates and alternates for breathing space on the claustrophobic Madison Square Garden floor (30,000 sq. ft., or about half the size of a football field). "There might be a few ripped trousers and coats. There might be a few bumps and bruises," says NBC'S Pettit. Of course, some kind of action like that may be necessary to keep the nomination of a presidential candidate from being upstaged by Bionic Woman.

* The others: Tom Brokaw, John Hart and Catherine Mackin. CBS will have Morton Dean, Roger Mudd, Dan Rather and Bob Schieffer on the floor, and ABC will field a team of Ann Compton, Sam Donaldson, Herbert Kaplow and Frank Reynolds.

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