[ad_2]
CLEVELAND, Ohio – Nearing the end of the third night of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, veteran NBC anchor-reporter Tom Brokaw opined that Donald Trump "was learning that this isn't a reality show." Well, actually, Tom, yeah, it was. Sure it was.
I'm not quite sure what prime-time programming Brokaw was watching, but both the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention certainly ended up playing like TV reality shows – a bit rough and raucous around the edges, serving up a scattershot mix of startling and familiar moments.
They were technically unscripted events, yet they tried to stick to a trite-and-true formula. Still, no matter how hard they tried, the conventions refused to stick to the script. They frequently strayed from the established, carefully plotted playbooks that have shaped these events for decades.
They were sometimes wearisome, sometimes inspiring, sometimes hilarious, sometimes profound, sometimes silly, sometimes riveting, sometimes insipid, sometimes suspenseful, sometimes angry, sometimes giddy, sometimes remarkably real in an oh-so-human way, sometimes bizarrely unreal in surrealistic way. That is reality television.
And they gave the television news teams in Cleveland and Philadelphia conventions that were anything but business as usual. For TV, the RNC and the DNC were the gifts that just kept giving.
Comedian Stephen Colbert aired his first live show during the RNC with a musical number that featured the refrain "Christmas in July." He was referring to the bounty of material the conventions would be serving up to satirists and late-night talk-show hosts on a prime-time platter. But it was Christmas in July for all of the TV organizations watching the political intrigue unfold in Cleveland and Philadelphia, from the morning crews to the delighted pundits of the night.
Remember, these same pundits and commentators have long been whining about the national conventions being relentlessly planned, predictable and packaged infomercials for the two parties and their candidates. They yearned for conventions that were less produced and more surprising, less Madison Avenue slickness and more down-and-dirty political street fighting.
"Well, they got their wish," ABC anchor and Orange High School graduate George Stephanopoulos told The Plain Dealer. "And it's absolutely riveting. Each night has been like a reality show, where you don't know the outcome."
George got it. Tom missed it.
As if to set the tone for what was to follow, the first night of the RNC at Quicken Loans Arena featured a lineup that included four speakers who have been stars of reality series: Willie Robertson ("Duck Dynasty"), Scott Baio ("Scott Baio Is 45 . . . and Single"), Antonio Sabato Jr. ("My Antonio") and, of course, Donald Trump ("The Celebrity Apprentice").
And like any good reality show, the conventions contained elements of mystery, betrayal, suspense, soap opera, scandal, double-dealing, shifting alliances, scheming, strategy and intrigue. Each day brought a new controversy or red-hot topic for discussion.
The RNC moved from accusations that portions of Melania Trump's speech had been plagiarized to the "lock her up" chants inspired by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's indictment of Hillary Clinton to the chorus of boos that drowned out Ted Cruz's refusal to endorse Trump to Trump's dramatic arrival on the convention floor near the end of Cruz's speech.
"Hollywood couldn't have scripted it any better," Norah O'Donnell said on CBS.
"A week few will forget," said NBC's Hallie Jackson.
How could the Democrats compete with this wild ride? Representatives of television's national news organizations went into the weekend between conventions wondering if the DNC would seem staid and steady after the bang-and-clang of the RNC.
What would there be to talk about when the DNC began Monday at the City of Brotherly Love's Wells Fargo Center? We got our answer even before the camera lights reached full intensity in the arena.
Then WikiLeaks changed the perception and the narrative for television – for anchors, reporters, commentators, analysts and, yes, comedians. The document-disclosure website posted more than 19,000 hacked Democratic National Committee emails. Goodbye, staid and packaged. Hello, controversy and contention.
Now we moved from the constant disruptions caused by Bernie Sanders supporters to the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz as DNC chair to responses to Trump's call for Russia to use hacking to obtain Clinton's private emails to Vice President Joe Biden's rip-roaring, old-fashioned, barn-burner convention speech to former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's billionaire-to-billionaire takedown of Trump to Clinton's historic nomination.
And yet, even though, as Stephanopoulos said, the TV news teams got what they wanted, they didn't always seem ready to respond.
What was predictable was the palaver of the talking heads. What was wearisome was the responses to the major speeches, almost always extravagant in praise, except from those on opposite sides of a political divide (and that was wearisome, too). They all couldn't be (and weren't) that good.
It kicked up some great television, in a reality-TV kind of way, but television news, relying on its established playbook, was not always up to providing great coverage.
What we saw over the last two weeks was that the political landscape is transforming. The discussion is changing, shaping these conventions even while the conventions are attempting to shape the discussion. And we saw that television is too often operating with an out-of-date playbook.
In an era of Twitter and Facebook, regularly acknowledged by TV news anchors, we're often ahead of the TV news with reports from the floor, views of delegates, plans for protests. With the world changing around them, they gave us more of the same.
But the same wasn't true of the political parties, which, try as they might, couldn't control the message. That made for entertaining television, all right – reality television, and we all continue to debate the actual reality of that.
Let's block ads! (Why?)
[ad_1]
Source link
