Democratic Convention Review: The TV Coverage

So, we set the TiVo to tape the Demo­c­ra­tic Con­ven­tion on CNN. It started cov­er­age at 5:00pm, so I fig­ured it would be the most com­pre­hen­sive. Sev­eral hours into the replay, all I’d got­ten was Wolf Blitzer yap­ping for hours, John King play­ing “Mas­ter of the Map,” and a bunch of bit play­ers try­ing to get the scraps of air­time Wolf would throw out. Oh, and James Carville look­ing like he’d swal­lowed some­thing really bit­ter (which actu­ally made me happy).

The “best team in pol­i­tics” rou­tinely talked over speak­ers (includ­ing Nancy Pelosi), only grudg­ingly allowed that peo­ple might want to see any of the video mon­tages, and then bitched ad nau­seum about how the Democ­rats offered no “red meat” on this first day. Con­sid­er­ing that I don’t think the “best team in pol­i­tics” lis­tened to any of the con­ven­tion going on behind them, I’m not sur­prised they felt that way.

So, after a while of this, when we’d caught up to live TV (just as Ted Kennedy was end­ing his speech) we started flip­ping around. We set­tled on two chan­nels, PBS, for unfil­tered cov­er­age (with just the occa­sional and well-placed explana­tory com­ment, like who that was on stage), and NBC, for polit­i­cal pun­ditry. ABC was a can­di­date, but I couldn’t take much of Diane Sawyer try­ing to be rel­e­vant again (where has she been?).

Tonight, we’ll watch PBS and NBC, and we may give ABC a chance again. But, and this is all I have to say on the mat­ter, poor Katie Couric. And is it just me, or is Brian Williams start­ing to turn into Peter Jen­nings? Look at him around the eyes. That’s not a bad thing.

How’s your Con­ven­tion Cov­er­age going? Do tell.