We Deserve Better from Network News
By: Taft Matney
Much like the winds from Tropical Storm Isaac now making its way to the Gulf, network television news blows.
NBC dedicated each of its affiliated networks to 17 days of live Olympic coverage – even a streaming web site and mobile apps – so we could watch the trampoline finals and hear about swimmer Ryan Lochte using a 50 meter pool as his personal toilet.
TLC, which used to serve as an abbreviation for “The Learning Channel,” now gives us such gems as “Toddlers and Tiaras” and “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.”
MTV, which once stood for “Music Television,” is now the home of Snooki. By the way, both mom and new baby Lorenzo Dominic LaValle are resting comfortably at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, N.J.
As Sheriff Buford T. Justice of Texas asked in 1977, “What the h___ is the world coming to?”
Political conventions used to be big TV. It used to be that the “Big Three” covered them in primetime. It was the time that political parties put themselves on display for the nation and the world to see. It was the time when Republicans and Democrats alike put their best and brightest on the stage and in the spotlight so they could tell voters why each party’s ideas were better than the other, why each party’s candidates were better than the other, and this all built to the introduction of each party’s ticket hoping to lead the free world for at least the next four years.
It was three hours each night of the convention, and it was a heckuva show. I still have the 1988 Republican National Convention on VHS. It was political theater at its finest and gave us some riveting entertainment.
I remember being at the GOP convention in San Diego with the wife (who was then just the girlfriend) in 1996 as we watched then Oklahoma Congressman J. C. Watts and we listened to his speech about “The American Dream” and how he “never thought that the fifth of six children born to Helen and Buddy Watts– in a poor black neighborhood, in the poor rural community of Eufaula, Oklahoma– would someday be called Congressman.” Sure, we were watching it live from the convention floor, but when I returned home to Mauldin, friends who knew I went and strangers who noticed my convention shirt came up to me one after another and told me about how they watched the convention on TV and how motivating it was for them.
That was ’96. That was three hours a night of coverage. That was the relative infancy of 24-hour news channels who even then realized that political conventions were something special.
Fast-forward to 2012.
Unless you have cable or satellite television, and more and more American homes are cutting the cable cord every day, you’ll be largely shut out of this year’s convention coverage. As networks shift their air talent to subscription-based channels to talk about the events in Tampa and Charlotte, they’re leaving ONE HOUR each night for coverage by their over-the-air broadcast partners at ABC, CBS, and NBC.
ONE HOUR EACH NIGHT.
We complain about voter apathy. We complain about low voter turnout. We complain that the political process isn’t open enough for “average Americans.” We allow talking heads with personal agendas to color the nation’s political discourse without being able to hear political positions firsthand.
For some reason, we don’t complain to the networks about their lack of airtime that we could use to educate ourselves on issues, facts, and the politicians who spout them.
Why? Because we’re too busy fist-pumping at the Jersey Shore, saying “Yes,” to the dress, and deciding who in America has talent.
As NBC, CBS, and ABC made gazillions of dollars from advertising, they used to find a way to use their powers for good, too. Why can’t they do that now? Why can’t they make a concerted effort to reengage Americans in the political process instead or perpetuating the bad side of it? After all, the Fall television season doesn’t event begin for two more weeks.
Network execs say that political conventions have become nothing more than infomercials. So what? Isn’t that what we want and need, to some extent?
Instead of political ads telling you that “Candidate X” wants to kill your family pet and take away Gramdma’s medication, there’s nothing wrong with political parties, their representatives, and their candidates standing up on national television once every four years and saying, “Here’s our vision for America. Here’s our vision for our nation’s future. Here’s why you should vote FOR us.”
We’ve gotten to the point where political communication is about why you should vote AGAINST someone instead of FOR someone. Abbreviated network coverage has forced political messaging play to people’s fears. Expanding it would allow that messaging again to make the case to the people to support people and ideas. Isn’t that what we deserve?
Yes. Yes. A million times, yes. Like Honey Boo Boo says, “You better redneckognize!”
UPDATE: With the start of the Republican convention being delayed a day due to potential safety issues arising from Tropical Storm Isaac, four days of convention are being rescheduled in to three. Monday night’s network-broadcasted speech by Governor Nikki Haley of South Carolina will now be Tuesday at 9:00 p.m. — missing coverage from the over-the-air networks because of their limited time.
