On Television
KITMAN, MARVIN
ON TELEVISION By Marvin Kitman The Way It Wasn't These notes on television's coverage of the Republican National Convention are being transcribed at a time when the nation is gathering strength...
...Nixon hasn't lost an election since 1962...
...Do you get a little jealous of your sister...
...The erosion will continue in the third ballot...
...I should get it by the fourth...
...The real drama at a convention now goes on in closed rooms...
...It was all over, as far as I was concerned, when the prominent New Yorker revealed at a press conference that he was soft on Communism...
...and so forth...
...If Lincoln hadn't come from behind on the third ballot, the gop would be known today as the party of Seward...
...There was jubilation at abc corporate headquarters when a re-run of Garrison's Gorillas walloped Nixon's regulars by five Arbitron points...
...In five days and nights of expert analysis, they made it clear the Republican Presidential nomination would go to Richard Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller or Ronald Reagan...
...The use of ridicule at abc may have been caused by the frustration that network's reporters felt at not being able to ask as many dumb questions as the other networks' men...
...The problem with watching abc during the conventions, however, is that you always have the vague feeling you're missing something...
...On the second ballot, there'll be erosion in Nixon's strength...
...A. Yes, I really have...
...On the charismatic scale, Nixon's reading is minus...
...Q. Why will the delegates go to you, not Reagan...
...His real strength in the Republican party is that he has the image of a winner...
...Walter Cronkite, my favorite source of trivia, explained during one lull in the proceedings that the balloons, which played a pivotal role in the organized spontaneous demonstrations, cost a penny a piece...
...A. I can tell you this...
...The networks have a need to perform this public service twice within one month every four years...
...Nixon has 550 votes...
...As all the signs plainly said, Nixon was the one...
...It's understandable why this happened...
...My prediction is Nixon," he said of the talks with Nixon's masterminds, "but it could go either way...
...It's hard to see how the two major networks will be able to make the Chicago proceedings seem more exciting than the Miami convention...
...Thank you, George...
...Anybody who watched abc the night of the balloting, for example, couldn't get caught up in the Walter Hickle for President movement because the minor network didn't show it...
...The Reagan people," cbs viewers learned, "are upset with the position of their balloons in the nets over the rear end of the hall...
...Of another governor's possible appeal on the ticket in the Vice Presidential slot, Reynolds said, "Oh yes, Romney does very well in the cities, like Detroit...
...Thank you, Joe...
...But they said they can live with it...
...Coverage of Republican conventions has undoubtedly improved since 1860...
...They are like the hero who saves somebody from drowning after pushing the poor person into the water...
...abc has always been third in the hearts of the nation's voters, and I don't think it will lose any ground as a result of its unconventional coverage...
...The best example of this genre so far was Mike Wallace's interview with Julie Nixon...
...They gave it 90 minutes a night...
...Nixon enjoys charisma," abc newsman Howard K. Smith observed early in the race...
...That was the year the Democratic party took 103 ballots to pick John William Davis of West Virginia...
...asked the cbs newsman about the attention being paid by the press to her younger sibling rival, Tricia...
...As usual, nbc and cbs worked hard this year to give the impression there was a statistical chance the gop convention wasn't locked up...
...Thank you, Eddie...
...There was the Fon-tainebleau in all its Flatbush Mo-derne beauty...
...A cynic might think that the wait-and-see-posture taken by nbc and cbs was motivated by the $15 million investment they had in their coverage...
...Rocky used to look like a million bucks on television...
...There really has not been an open convention in national politics since 1924...
...A. [My notes read: Exceptionally long pause here.] I can win...
...Then a man standing on the roof of the convention hall in Chicago, the Wigwam, yelled down the results to the party workers in the streets...
...This made him more likeable to the liberal traitors he always claimed were selling out the country to Russia...
...Then he thanked the press vigorously and individually...
...Seward led on the first ballot, and his supporters went wild...
...Television has driven the hard business of the convention off the floor...
...The professional politicians already do this too well...
...abc's newsmen were exceptionally waspish, though, in their abridged version...
...He referred to Governor Reagan as "Ronnie, baby...
...The delegate who taped Nixon's remarks on open housing had a better story than the cbs newsman who asked delegate Clark Reed of Mississippi outside a caucus room, "What happened inside...
...Q. What is your strategy...
...and the Grant Wood-like Georgia delegation marching into caucus in a suite named the Ivory Tower...
...But I'm sure they'll manage...
...You saw nice movies about Miami Beach...
...Good old Wally, as Representative Pollock of Alaska explained in his nominating speech, is the Horatio Alger figure who came to Alaska with a borrowed $5 bill in his pocket and rose through the rank and file to become governor...
...The anchor men were veritable fountains of knowledge...
...This is where responsible journalists should be in one way or another in this electronic age...
...He was the best of the 60 candidates whose names were placed in nomination and seconded at great length...
...The abc viewers also missed seeing delegate Clark McGregor of Minnesota check for his wallet after talking to nbc reporter John Chancellor about the machinations for the Vice Presidency at the convention...
...The polls had been saying substantially the same thing all year...
...A promising addition to the jaded television press corps—David Brink-ley seemed especially sour this year —the inexperienced Reynolds will have to learn it is impossible to make a mockery of a convention...
...the fabled Moulin Rouge motel with its marquee reminding the home viewer, "Have Your Next Affair Here...
...Very Special Correspondent Art Buchwald ran into the same problem covering his first convention for cbs...
...Obviously this wasn't Rocky's last press conference...
...Actually, Rockefeller and Reagan were battling each other for the divorce vote, which is quite large when you throw in all those who are unhappily married...
...Lightning could strike anytime between the first ballot, as the Nixon camp suggested, and the ninth or tenth ballot, as Harold Stassen said...
...Without a race, Gulf Oil and B. F. Goodrich might conclude the democratic processes are no longer viable, and decide there's nothing in the American political system for them in 1972...
...The convention followed precisely the scenario he had written...
...With its eyes more openly on the rating charts, abc decided what the Republican National Convention was worth as a news event...
...I'll start off with about 280...
...But I fear that the uncritical reporting of exchanges like this one with nbc's Ray Scherer gives him Nixon's old mantle: Q. Have you caught up to Nixon...
...The delegates seem to be just sitting there," Frank Reynolds said about a report of delegate movement from one camp or another, "enjoying the convention, if enjoying is the proper word...
...What the people in the streets didn't know was that Lincoln's managers swung the proceedings around by promising Cabinet posts to delegates right on the convention floor...
...That was a very important election in the history of the Republican party, as abc's Sam Donaldson observed in a one-minute essay on the improvement of communications at conventions...
...As Lincoln said, 'Before you can become a statesman, you have to get elected.' Inadvertently, the cameras picked up the big story about Rockefeller's future in politics...
...That show is going off the air next season, while the candidates will be around all fall...
...The most regrettable thing about the major networks' adherence to their contrived dramas of the past was that this prevented them from sharing one of the biggest news stories in modern political history with the audience: Nixon was telling the truth...
...The erosion went the wrong way," he explained in a conference with reporters after the votes had been counted...
...ON TELEVISION By Marvin Kitman The Way It Wasn't These notes on television's coverage of the Republican National Convention are being transcribed at a time when the nation is gathering strength to watch the Democrats...
...Miss Nixon didn't respond: "Yes, as I was telling my psychiatrist just this morning . . ." Still, tv's full color coverage of the gop meeting did have its bright spots...
...At the point where a boomlet was developing for Wally in American homes, he rushed to the podium to deny that he was a candidate...
...The dramas they report are often the same ones they've created...
...The Vice Presidential nomination, on the other hand, would go to any of the dozens who had been promised second place on the ticket...
...He added that the unions charge the candidates 33 cents each to fill them up, presumably with hot air...
...He had the image of a man who was warmly squeezing your arm when he talked...
Vol. 51 • August 1968 • No. 16
