A Surprise from MTV
FRANK, REUEVEN
On Television A SURPRISE FROM MTV by REUVEN FRANK Once they were powerful, universally acknowledged. Now they are tired; they creak; they are not "relevant.'' With trudging steps they lumber...
...It was great television," Doyle said...
...Arvey shook his head and declared, "We can't have that...
...Fox, the upstart fourth network, had the largest audience on at least two of the Democrats' four nights...
...In Houston starting August 17, the Republicans will break both those records...
...He answered, "Yes, I do...
...In San Francisco eight years earlier, viewers watched the conservative West capture the Republican Party from the "moderate" East...
...He remembered his manners: "Excuse me, Governor Clinton...
...He cared about issues, liked good speakers even when he disagreed with them, followed the debates, had the time of his life...
...Arvey's response was, "How many people were watching...
...Looking for news, the networks found two little stories: the riddle of Jesse Jackson and the recalcitrance of Jerry Brown...
...The delegates had become extras in a made-for-TV movie...
...People are getting to see how [a convention] works...
...Thus, another Democratic convention is over...
...He had been elected a delegate the day after his senior prom...
...Primaries preempted the fractious process of picking the candidate, removing what most interested the public and therefore television...
...As Clinton and Gore boarded their campaign bus, newspaper reporters were asking television executives, What will you do differently in 1996...
...You've got to start young...
...I know that sounds condescending...
...Don't schools teach that anymore...
...The three old networks, which, combined, broadcast maybe 16 hours of coverage all week in New York, set another record: never had so few watched...
...Every day, as part of its regular feature The Day In Rock, Tabitha Soren, a young journalism graduate, reviewed the previous night and introduced special reports by Dave Mustaine, "front man" for a group called Megadeth, and a (female) rapper named M.C...
...Many had come to New York committed to the candidate and the party, but full of doubt...
...Throughout the piece, the camera was typically MTV-nervous, always moving, turning, panning, the picture at every angle but upright...
...He made me feel better than I had all week...
...On the way to a seminar, Marc stopped for a pushcart hot dog, then to see Bill Clinton drive past...
...It's bad for politicians to be seen fighting.'' Ever since, the parties have strained to purify what people see...
...The "older" networks could have profitably done the same for their (older) viewers...
...They should ask the politicians, What will the parties do differently in '96...
...That was great television because it was news, and being news, it was history...
...But we're trying to learn as much as we can as fast as we can...
...Maybe 80...
...MTV's pro-abortion bias did not preclude presenting a pro-lifer's position, nor did its reflexive showbiz liberalism rule out POW-MIA agitators...
...Soren and her crew woke him in his hotel, followed him to a delegation meeting where Georgia's Governor and Illinois' Senator Paul Simon briefed delegates on what was going on...
...Do today's high school students need such a simple explanation...
...That ended only when Ross Perot quit, endowing reporters with real news...
...they are not "relevant.'' With trudging steps they lumber toward the elephants' graveyard...
...The drive to look good began in 1952, the second time TV was on hand, after the Republicans' reputation for harmony was shattered by a bitter, open battle between supporters of Ohio's Senator Robert A. Taft and General Dwight D. Eisenhower...
...The two have been intertwined since 1948, when the three established networks and a fourth new one called Du-Mont (buried long ago) carried the proceedings "gavel-to-gavel" only to the East Coast, from Massachusetts to Virginia—the range of AT&T's "coaxial cable...
...The New York Times devoted a whole page of its daily convention section to television's doings...
...So there the chosen delegates sat, bored, gossiping, roaming, eating hot dogs, the manna of our great political conclaves...
...Glenn was good-looking, cleanshaven, well-groomed...
...If that is what they need, though, that is what they got: simply, objectively, straight...
...Fox cleaned up...
...Was there news at the 1992 Democratic National Convention...
...Nevertheless, friction kept spilling onto the floor—and onto television...
...The networks, too busy with Jesse Jackson and Jerry Brown, did not report that very well...
...Initially, the networks got drama and excitement, while the politicians got coverage that amounted to free advertising...
...Lyte...
...They were asking the wrong people...
...Platform committees were shunted to faraway cities...
...He changed from shorts and T-shirt into chinos and shirt and tie...
...Following one particularly raucous session, Robert Doyle, who ran the networks' camera pool, was setting locations for the next day's Today show, still the only network morning program...
...Not according to Lord Northcliffe's definition: "News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress...
...Since television came on the scene in 1948, there has never been more talk about its coverage, or less coverage...
...MTV's best piece was a day in the life of Marc Glenn, at 18 the youngest Georgia delegate...
...Soren asked him, "Do you believe in the theory, older and wiser...
...Which will get there first, the national political conventions or the networks...
...CNN, broadcasting three times as many convention hours as the traditional networks, seemed to spend three times as many minutes on Jackson and Brown...
...These were the people who nominated Senator Barry Goldwater for President, prevented New York's Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller from addressing the convention during prime time in the East, and booed him when he finally did manage to speak...
...A new, hard generation thrust itself suddenly into the light...
...John Chancellor was led off the convention floor, and the most popular item in the Young Republican souvenir tent was a button reading: "Stamp Out Huntley-Brinkley...
...Lacking news to report, TV went for glitz...
...That, too, was great television...
...Good teachers had excited him about politics...
...Among those getting too little attention was MTV's 20-minute nightly reports, which were surprisingly good...
...Fifty...
...Millions," he offered grandly...
...Doyle asked Arvey if he had seen that night's fight about the seating of competing delegations, presuming Arvey enjoyed seeing Republicans savaging each other...
...MTV surely knows better than I, but it was unsettling...
...decisions are now made before conventions begin...
...no more meeting a few days before the convention when the networks' massed equipment was in place to parade every shouting match...
...These were people who hated the press, and believed they had not only been kept from power but off television...
...From Governor Mario M. Cuomo's nominating speech on Wednesday to Clinton's acceptance speech on Thursday, the convention became a revival meeting, an emotional lift, and by the time it was over the rafters rang...
...Lyte's summary of the convention platform—what a platform is, how this one came about and what it called for—was concise, easy to follow and carefully done, emphasizing issues of presumed concern to young people...
...Hopefully, I can get a good spot to see Bill...
...But anchoring from the floor, an idea wiser heads had rejected since 1956, is like Vin Scully doing play-by-play from second base...
...Yet what was I to expect from a rock music cable channel appealing to high school students who, we keep hearing, have no idea of history or geography or current affairs...
...Remember Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Party...
...Actually, both issues had been settled in the primaries the day Clinton won enough delegates to sew up the nomination...
...You can't wait until you're 70 to get involved...
...That meant hundreds of hours of free programming for the fledgling television operation, and made the new toy respectable...
...It had no convention coverage...
...Time to go to the convention...
...In 1972 they rewrote their rules and tried to jettison their past, barring Chicago's Mayor Richard J. Daley, the last of the historic bosses...
...Two limousines whisked by too fast, but he raised a short cheer...
...M.C...
...A long-haired political science professor, filmed for some reason in and around South Ferry, explained what conventions are for and how delegates are chosen, intermixing newsreel clips from earlier conventions with current ones to illustrate...
...In the knot of curious idlers watching him was Colonel Jacob Arvey, the legendary Democratic boss of Chicago, where the GOP convention was held...
...This year more than ever, newspapers found TV itself worth writing about...
...There were constant admonitions to register, to vote...
...The series' title was Choose or Lose...
...Nice people were not ashamed to own TV sets...
...So each four years the conventions were less and less interesting...
...Almost all the newspaper reports were about the networks...
...They were not in Madison Square Garden to decide...
...And yet, even without debate, without decision, the convention somehow energized them...
...Both lingered overmuch on protesters outside Madison Square Garden, but what they said was incisive and informative, if pithy...
...It's the parties that are not getting their money's worth...
...Everything else is advertising...
...Doyle guessed...
...As he and 58 followers marched out of the Miami convention hall, cameras recording their every step, you saw history changing course...
...Before then, Times drama critic Frank Rich, whose one word closes theaters, shrivels investments and makes beautiful women cry, found time to ask NBC why Tom Brokaw did not anchor from the convention floor, as did CBS' Dan Rather and ABC's Peter Jennings...
...They left full of hope—or perhaps half-full...
...They were there to be on television...
...The Democrats split openly over civil rights—the "loyalty oath"—and the Vietnam War...
...Then the parties started working hard to "look good" on the tube—that is, to reduce visible discord, even debate...
Vol. 75 • July 1992 • No. 9
