In poll, most say they won't watch
Despite a high level of interest in the 2004 presidential election, less than one-third of respondents in a recent poll plan to spend much time watching next week's Democratic convention on television, according to the Vanishing Voter Project at Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center.
The results seem to reflect the concern that nominating conventions have become scripted coronations and to validate the three major broadcast networks' decision to limit prime-time coverage to three hours for each event. But Thomas Patterson, director of the Vanishing Voter Project, said the networks' decreasing interest contributes to voter apathy.
''It's both change in the convention which diminishes public interest and it's the absence of the coverage," he said. ''If you've got a license to operate on the public airwaves, what's your obligation? It seems to me that three hours [of coverage] is getting close to thumbing your nose."
The national survey of 518 adults conducted last week suggested the public is much more engaged in this election than it was four years ago. Forty-six percent could recall reading or seeing a campaign news story in the past day, compared with only 28 percent in a similar poll in 2000. Four years ago, only 30 percent said they had thought about the campaign in the previous 24 hours. That number jumped to 63 percent this election season.
Yet only 31 percent said they planned to watch some or most of the Democratic convention, a very modest increase from the 28 percent who said so four years ago. And despite being questioned just days before the start of the Boston gathering, 66 percent of respondents were not sure when the convention was taking place and another 11 percent said they thought it was more than a month away.
The convention TV audience has been steadily shrinking. According to the project, an average of 28 percent of the nation's households with a TV set were tuned to the 1976 conventions, with each watching more than 11 hours. By 2000, however, an average of only 15 percent of the households were watching, and average viewing time was just two hours.
Whether those numbers continue to drop this year may depend on ''inadvertent viewers" who stumble across the convention and keep watching, according to the survey. Since the study found that ABC, CBS, and NBC are most likely to ensnare those viewers, it concluded that reduced coverage by the big three broadcasters ''bodes poorly" for attracting a bigger audience.
Yesterday, David Westin, president of ABC News, defended the plan at a news conference announcing expanded convention coverage via broadband, wireless, and digital television. Asked why the ABC network itself will not air more of the event, Westin said ''the American people have told us pretty resoundingly . . . that they'd rather do other things with their time than watch gavel-to-gavel coverage in the tens of millions."
