On Television
FRANK, REUVEN
On Television DEMOCRACY DOTCOM By Reuven Frank The novelties foreseen bymedia pundits pondering next year's Presidential contest are an enhanced role for allnews cable networks and a...
...Even thinking about another Presidential election year can be a shock because the last one hasn't really ended...
...When what were still called educational stations were finally assembled into PBS, the commercial networks pledged millions in support...
...When a politician appears on a TV program in its normal execution, they use the dismissive term "free media...
...Thus Ventura was elected not by disgruntled Republicans or disaffected Democrats, but by citizens who rarely if ever vote...
...There used to be a poem about fleas that have little fleas to bite 'em, and the little fleas have smaller fleas, so on ad infinitum...
...The imminence of another Presidential race will then defer any meaningful action until a new cycle can start...
...As broadcast news pays ever less attention to meanings and implications in political campaigns, scoring free media will take ingenuity, persistence and cynicism...
...The law does not honor credit card contributions with matching funds...
...Some new names craving recognition (www.kasich2000.com and www.mccainforpresident.com) have had to make themselves heard above the entrenched positions of today's Harold Stassens, who boast of experience and seniority as candidates, and the special advantages of a few other newcomers...
...A sales executive has observed, happily: "The nastiest campaigns often deliver the highest returns...
...Expect all three...
...There were always free media, even before television...
...Predictably, some carped that this generosity paid public TV for relieving them of any need to present serious music or Shakespeare or the like...
...In California, such revenues more than doubled because of an unusually interesting race for governor, following two hard-fought and lavishly advertised primaries, plus the state's customary spate of referendums...
...The conventions themselves will get less television network exposure than ever...
...Years later, all-news cable, withmore time to fill than material to fill it, assumed the onus of extensive political coverage, including the conventions...
...By contrast, ABC News has let it be known that it does not intend to treat them as news events...
...Dole's, will not help others...
...Politicians believe in their hearts that television exists only to present their messages and advance their causes...
...Steve Forbes made his first official announcement for his second bid on www...
...The network will carry major speeches—keynotes, acceptances, perhaps nominations...
...L ike al 1 members of the political class, they only watch television on Sundays...
...ElizabethDole (www.edole2000.org), whom the consensus considers the first woman with a reasonable chance of becoming President of the United States, was until her recent resignation president of the American Red Cross...
...About a year ago, some party operatives were urging they be held on weekends to make the networks less unwilling to sacrifice commercial time, but that quickly died down...
...The epiphany was so strong it crossed over into the broadcast networks' nightly newscasts, morning shows and Sunday gladiatorials...
...He ran as the candidate of the Reform Party founded by H. Ross Perot...
...On all-news cable the Governor of Texas (www.georgebush...
...It could explode into a new category of political consultants...
...Reluctant news division planners at NBC and CBS have yet to decide exactly how they will handle the conventions...
...The pundits were dumbfounded when he won...
...Most have full-time professional Web advisers...
...Last Christmas Eve, in a CBS hour-long television special called The American Red Cross Celebrating Miracles, Mrs...
...He spoke to their disaffections...
...It was she who arranged Mrs...
...Few demographic groups are less interested in politics or vote less often...
...After Bob Dole lost, the Red Cross hired Farris as a $200,000 a year consultant...
...Having provided politicians politicizing uninterrupted since New Hampshire and Iowa, they will continue to do so up to Election Day and beyond...
...Army tank, donning a yarmulke or eating a knish can get you on the TV news...
...They had seen him on TV—his shaved head, his oiled biceps...
...Yet last November Minnesota had the country's highest voter turnout, and its own highest in decades for a non-Presidential year...
...Campaigning has become so expensive—$25 million to see a serious candidate through the primaries and caucuses—that even the wealthiest candidates, the most successful fund-raisers, will be obsessed with the need for more money, more television...
...forbes.2000.com, but Vice President Al (formerly Albert) Gore didn't open his (www.algore2000.com) until the end of March...
...By the summer's national political conventions, all will have lost but two...
...Bill Bradley (www.billbradley.com) has asked the Federal Elections Commission for new rules...
...She has also been in two Presidents' cabinets, was a successful businesswoman, and played a very prominent role as the wife of the 1996 Republican candidate for the White House...
...Democracy exists, they believe, to elevate them to office and then keep them there...
...Dole appeared more often than the supposed host of the show...
...It is against several laws to give one candidate this kind of free publicity, but her candidacy was still unannounced at the time so it was legal...
...The journalism will be primarily left to the morning and evening news programs and especially to Ted Koppel's Nightline...
...Like all the other players, from the candidates to the Internet providers, he approaches next year with a private dream...
...The lure of free media is so great that Presidential campaigns can be expected to spend vast sums to attain it...
...Their optimism derives from their experience during the 1998 non-Presidential election year, when a third to a half more money was spent on political advertising than during the previous off-year, 1994...
...According to Media Week magazine, which alone reported the incident, the show's producer, Melinda Farris, had worked in the Bob Dole Presidential campaign...
...Now the Internet will satisfy those who care about issues...
...Web sites mobilize early supporters, promote fund drives and provide a better forum for policy statements than 30-second TV commercials...
...Her first job was the Christmas Eve special that she brought to CBS as a package, fully produced, including commercials...
...Ithopes to dispense with deploying the hundreds of journalists and technicians who normally set up facilities in two separate cities with more and better equipment than many full-time TV stations...
...There will be an unprecedented scramble for what political courtiers call "free media...
...It being Christmas Eve, ratings were low...
...Some, ready to try anything, may turn to bungee jumping...
...There will be the usual complaints that the networks, rapidly diminishing though they are, are ducking the responsibilities of what are still the most important vehicles for reaching the democratic citizenry...
...Lamar Alexander (www.lamaralexander.com) never stopped running, nor did Forbes or Pat Buchanan (www.gopatgo2000.org...
...It could be fun next year scoring candidates for the ingenuity used to get time before the cameras...
...On Television DEMOCRACY DOTCOM By Reuven Frank The novelties foreseen bymedia pundits pondering next year's Presidential contest are an enhanced role for allnews cable networks and a conspicuous use of the Internet...
...Dole's memorable audience walk-through at the Republican convention in San Diego...
...His formula for television exposure, like Mrs...
...An example of the pervasive and sometimes indirect effect of free media was the election of professional wrestler Jesse Ventura as Governor of Minnesota...
...The networks will reply that both debates on the issues and each candidate's full position papers are available on the Internet...
...Next year's fund-raising scandals will be exposed the year after and debated the year after that...
...Entertainment, distraction, titillation, and information are merely techniques for assembling the motley to be addressed...
...For more than a decade, though— through war, weather, pestilence, and scandal—at least five and as many as eight of every week's highest-rated cable programs have been professional wrestling...
...He beat two widely known and personally respected public officials, the Mayor of St...
...com) became his party's daunting frontrunner without anyone knowing where he stood...
...Meanwhile, dour as the news and programming departments envision the coming year, the sales departments are quivering with anticipation...
...As everything changes, nothing changes...
...What we will see shortly, though, will surpass all experience...
...There will be reporters, but no more than for any distant event in these days of universally accessible live coverage...
...They will further maintain that the 60 to 80 million Americans—estimates vary—with Internet access are precisely the sort who might want to read position papers...
...No one pretends they are anything other than scripted entertainment, but they appeal especially to young white males of average income and average education...
...As for the Internet, besides furnishing "chat rooms" to the like-minded and ideological killing grounds for the self-pitying, it endows each politician with his own cheap, infinitely available and totally controllable pulpit...
...Patrick's Day or Pulaski Day, sailing a boat in Boston Harbor, riding a U.S...
...He got them to the polls...
...But an hour of prime time is an hour of prime time...
...They have already launched candidacies, kept old ones alive, and started the campaign season distressingly early...
...They will again be accused of not only skimping on presenting a vital contest of ideas, but using even such little time as they begrudge less on elucidating issues than on stimulating what will once more be called the "horse race...
...Dan Quayle was not a candidate in 1996, but his Web site for this time around (www.quayle2000.com) has long been up and running...
...Actually, that is how radio networks covered conventions during the Roosevelt years...
...Failing some succulent scandal or similar sensation, gavel-to-gavel coverage, which never existed before television, will be the meat and potatoes of all-news cable...
...By pigeon post or cyberspace, campaigns mean television, and television means money...
...But the Internet cannot yet be used for direct fund-raising...
...and as a professional wrestler, he had been on television a great deal...
...Every Presidential candidate already has a Web site...
...Paul and the state Attorney General, the latter the son and namesake of Minnesota's famous liberal hero, Senator and later Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey Ventura had two advantages: As someone totally unschooled in politics, he spoke plain English...
...They will finally be identified in the titles printed across their chests when they appear on talk shows as "Republican Free Media Consultant" and "Democratic Free Media Consultant...
...They are, in fact, already apparent...
...He was manifestly not another politician...
...Marching on St...
...Babblers-and-bulletins cable networks were around during the last campaign, of course, but in 2000 they will be central, serving the candidates as major dueling grounds...
Vol. 82 • April 1999 • No. 5
