Jonathan Storm: TV gears up for the conventions

As the Olympic stragglers pack up after a stunning two weeks in Beijing, TV news hawks gird for their own grueling two weeks of back-to-back political coverage at the presidential nominating conventions starting tomorrow.

Viewers have a panoply of choices, from ConLite (one-hour-a-night coverage by ABC, CBS and NBC) to the no-nonsense minutiae of C-Span, to the nonstop nincompoopery of the cable news networks, which have gone into full song-and-dance mode. PBS will offer three hours of coverage nightly.

Presidential election politics offer a rich vein of ratings, and advertising revenue, for cable news outlets, and the conventions are a highlight. CNN, Fox News and MSNBC have been falling all over each other to scrounge every last eyeball, each trying to persuade viewers it knows politics best, with a frantic fanaticism that may actually turn viewers away.

The promos blare: "MSNBC - The Place for Politics," and "Fox News Channel - We Cover Politics Like Nobody Else."

But CNN is the worst offender, with Wolf Blitzer and others repeatedly going into full-shill mode in the middle of newscasts, "like grinning soap salesmen reading from cue cards," said Slate media critic Jack Shafer.

The network was shameless last month at the Television Critics Association summer meeting when asked about the journalistic soundness of continuously crowing that it has "The Best Political Team on Television."

First, Washington bureau chief David Bohrman, who heads CNN's political coverage, tried to defend what marketing expert David Meerman Scott calls the "incredibly annoying" practice.

Then, after Blitzer blathered a bit about how the claim is obviously true, CNN boss Jon Klein cut off further discussion.

Leave it to

The Daily Show

's Jon Stewart to nail the situation with satirical hyperbole.

Behind foaming promos from all three cable networks, Stewart observed on the show last month:

"This year, folks, you're not going to have to settle for their overpromising graphics and underperforming anchors, 'cause this year, you can settle for ours."

"The Best Campaign Team in the Universe, Ever," goes

The Daily Show

promo. "We'll bring you all the news stories first, before it's even true," said Stewart, whose show will be going to Denver for the Democrats this week and St. Paul for the Republicans next week, while his Comedy Central partner, Stephen Colbert, will be stuck truculently complaining at home.

Historically, the conventions have been scheduled several weeks apart with the Olympics in between, but they're stacked together this year, at least partially to benefit from campaign-finance law idiosyncrasies.

ABC, CBS and NBC will be sending their anchors, and lots of other news personalities, to Denver and St. Paul. Network morning shows will have some convention components, as will the half-hour evening newscasts, but the Big Three have pretty much ceded convention coverage to others.

Sticking with such scintillating early-evening summer programming as

Big Brother,

America's Got Talent

, and

Wife Swap

reruns, all plan merely to air one hour live each night at 10 from the conventions, covering that day's highlights and perhaps featuring the special speakers each party has scheduled at that time, as they orchestrate what have evolved into promotional telethons. (NBC could hit a rough patch if Thursday night's Jaguars-Redskins preseason NFL game runs into Barack Obama's acceptance speech before 75,000 fans at Denver's Invesco Field.)

"Conventions . . . used to really mean something," CBS's Katie Couric told the TV critics. "And they still do; but in many ways there aren't a lot of surprises in political conventions anymore."

Just in case there are some, Couric will be blogging and anchoring a Web-based newscast, and all the networks plan beefed-up computer coverage. Internet news organizations such as Google and Yahoo! are also sending some troops, as are more opinionated online organs such as Slate and Huffington Post.

There will be no dearth of opinion on TV, but the cable nets, as usual, will be especially canted. Fox's

The O'Reilly Factor

and

Hannity and Colmes

will telecast from the convention cities. Though MSNBC will preempt

Countdown With Keith Olbermann

, it will have Coverage Anchored by Keith Olbermann.

CNN, Fox and MSNBC will also have plenty of gimmicks, originating in diners, bars and tents, as well as on-site at both conventions.

Other, smaller, cable networks will be on hand, as well. BET, aimed at African Americans, plans to cover Obama's nomination, but not McCain's. As everybody desperately seeks to mine what may be a resurgence among youthful voters, Current, a cable news operation manned by young people that's always aimed at young people, may have the inside track.

CN8 will dispatch Philadelphia veteran Larry Kane to his 22d and 23d nominating conventions, with three hours of prime-time coverage nightly, Monday through Thursday, moderated by Lynne Doyle.

PBS plans a similar schedule this week and next, anchored by Jim Lehrer, featuring

NewsHour

stalwarts Judy Woodruff, Ray Suarez and Gwen Ifill, and a panel of political analysts that will probably operate several decibels lower than those on cable.

A strong draw in that group: conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks, whose cultural insights frequently demonstrate that knowing only politics does not mean that you know what's going on in campaigns and elections.

"We used to consider ourselves gavel-to-gavel," Ifill told Denver Post TV critic Joanne Ostrow, who has the unenviable job of local media reporter trying to keep up with the ever-changing zoo that is a modern presidential nominating convention.

"That doesn't make sense anymore, for lots of reasons," Ifill said. "We're not C-Span. They perform a public service, but we provide more than that."

More packaging and more professional insight, perhaps, but for people who really want to decide things for themselves, nothing will beat the "delegate's eye view" of C-Span. It will be around every minute the conventions are in session, blissfully devoid of paid and/or partisan pontificators.