Hi-fi to Wifi: How the conventions evolved

Larry Kane

is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and host of "Voice of Reason" on CN8

I've seen a lot of conventions, and of all the things that have changed in almost 50 years, by far the most decisive is technology.

Take my third political convention. It was Aug. 28, 1968. Chicago. The Democratic National Convention. I was wedged between Mayor Richard Daley and fist-wielding security as he angrily left the sweltering Chicago Amphitheater.

Hours later, I tried to cross Michigan Avenue to deliver a packet of film to an airline freight office to be sent by air to Channel 6 in Philadelphia. But Daley's police, angry and out of control, started whacking the heads of demonstrators, and the blood began flowing - along with plastic bags of urine the demonstrators threw back at the police.

Weary and battered, I arrived back at the Ambassador Hotel with the local delegations, only to discover that stink bombs had been planted in the air-conditioning vents. It was an historic night, but the film from my third political convention, on its way by plane, would not be seen until 6 p.m. the next day.

The next afternoon, I watched from a hotel balcony as soldiers, ordered in by President Lyndon Johnson, roared down Michigan Avenue. Some were in tanks. Such images were doomsday for the Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey.

Me? I filed radio reports on a pay phone.

The scene now shifts to Kansas City's Kemper Arena. It is summer, 1976, and the Republican Convention. The Gipper, Ronald Reagan, dukes it out with President Ford. The president wins, but Reagan delivers a dramatic speech that overshadows Ford, who loses to Jimmy Carter in November.

I run into Gerald Ford in a hallway, and he says, "Mr. Kane, from Philadelphia." He remembers me from the Bicentennial celebration. The media ridiculed Gerald Ford, but he remembered names. My video interview with him, sent by jet, aired at 11 that night.

For hundreds of local news operations in America, the 1980 conventions were the first truly "live" conventions. At the GOP convention at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, I stood in an aisle high above the action, interviewing Pennsylvania Republican Drew Lewis. A top Reagan adviser, Lewis had written the phone number of George H.W. Bush on a slip of paper. When Reagan was about to call Bush to offer him the vice presidency, Lewis was in a state of shock. He had accidentally flushed paper and number down the toilet. He took quick action and, in a few minutes, recovered the information (not from the toilet). It humbles you to think that U.S. history may have been changed with a flush.

Two weeks later, as Carter was nominated, I went live via satellite from Madison Square Garden. Next to me was the alternate delegate section from Arkansas. The delegates were holding large signs and screaming, "Clinton for President! Clinton for President!" I thought to myself: Are they kidding? What a waste of time.

In 1984, Walter Mondale held his nominating party in San Francisco, and we had something new: portable videotape machines. The cost of satellite transmissions had gone down from $5,000 a hit to $500. We also had our own booth. San Francisco was memorable because an anchor from Chicago, Walter Jacobsen, pulled an ego fit and left the booth and his guest, the mayor of Chicago, the late Harold Washington. Since I was the only one in the booth at the time, I interviewed Washington instead, just moments after I interviewed Mayor Wilson Goode. The immediacy of satellite had pushed me into an unusual moment. I had 30 seconds to get ready for an interview of a mayor I had never met.

By the 1988 conventions, with the Democrats and Michael Dukakis in Atlanta, and the Republicans and Bush in New Orleans, satellite was routine, but convention-floor battles were eliminated by party rules. Never again would we see the thrill of the convention battle, first waged by Abraham Lincoln's forces at the Wigwam Arena in 1860 in Chicago.

In 1992 I was back in Madison Square Garden, where those folks from Arkansas moved to the main floor. Who knew?

The pollsters took over in 1996. Polls dictated policy, engineered flip-flops, and even dressed the candidates. Perhaps not by coincidence, in 1996, in Chicago and San Diego, the networks started abandoning gavel-to-gavel coverage.

For the next presidential election, 2000, the Republicans met in Philadelphia. Comcast owned the place, and it was the first convention wired for the Internet. Bloggers began to play a role.

In 2004, the conventions were in Boston and New York. In the same Madison Square Garden I visited in 1976, 1980 and 1992, I was able to broadcast live to KYW Newsradio - using only a small black box and a special phone line.

As for 2008, who knows? All I know is that, once again, it will be different.

My life with conventions seems like a ride from the pioneering days to the modern world: from 16mm film, to videotape, to satellite transmissions, e-mail, cell phones, live radio reports, blogging, and Internet fund-raising.

Now the smoke-filled rooms of yesteryear have been replaced by smoke-free arenas, hi-fi by WiFi, and cardboard security cards by holograms and bar codes. Networks have relinquished the big-time coverage, and cable fills the gap. Instead of a pay phone, your cell brings you movies, the news, and, of course, texting.

Are we better for it? Perhaps. Information comes at you at warp speed. The Internet - or, should I say, the reliable part of the Internet - has changed everything. Hour-old news, or five-minute-old news, seems aged and crusty. We get it fast, but is speed enough, and do we have the time to really figure it all out?

To show you how far we've come, I'll be reporting these conventions on three platforms at once: TV, radio, and simultaneous streaming video on the Internet.

I've come a long way from that pay phone.