Is it all worth just three hours of network TV?
This week, the Democratic National Convention has been "The Last Hurrah," "A Star Is Born," "Casablanca," and "In the Heat of the Night" all in one. It has been a festival of evocative moments -- the enduring spirit of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the revelatory passion of comer Barack Obama, the world-weary wisdom of Teresa Heinz Kerry, the righteous anger of the Rev. Al Sharpton. Too bad the country missed most of it.
While choice nuggets were mined for network newscasts and local cut-ins, the full oratorial impact of this week's speeches has been felt only by the proactive few who landed on the likes of CNN and C-Span. The major networks -- still the sun in the Great American Info-sphere -- have forked over a total of only three prime-time hours to the DNC, choosing to air "Fear Factor" over Al Gore and "For Love or Money" over Jimmy Carter.
Of course, the networks aren't in the TV business for love. The low ratings of Monday night's DNC hour only confirmed their decision to stick with their own personal DNC -- Dreary Network Clutter, such as "Big Brother 5." They've long been aware of what has been confirmed by all of this week's coverage: Conventions just don't make consistently dynamic entertainment. They have peak moments of drama, of joy, of historical import. But they're dominated by valleys of in-betweens, those long minutes of chaos, of noisiness, of podium tedium. The difficulties of turning a political convention into good TV have been clear this week on the cable outlets. They've been trying to ride the ebb and flow of excitement by placing anchors ringside. But, perched above the fray, these familiar faces -- CNN's Larry King, MSNBC's Chris Matthews -- might as well be back in their vacuum-like studios. They ignore the unglamorous speeches, which blare in the background, and cut to prefab presentations about Kerry's college years or the most overdone topic of the DNC, blogging. Or they jaw with the usual analysts and guests such as Bono, who talked to CNN's Anderson Cooper about AIDS.
The anchors are there at the Fleet, but only half there -- like, say, MTV VJs in a box at an OutKast concert, chattering about Andre 3000 while a muffled "Hey Ya" plays in the background. Even those "on the floor" -- including CNN's terribly misplaced guest commentator Mo Rocca -- have little to do but vamp. "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" drove that point home on Tuesday, when correspondent Ed Helms ironically told Stewart, "I'll be here on the floor all week, ignoring the content of speeches to ask inappropriate questions about Teresa Heinz Kerry's behavior and to show irrelevant and embarrassing pictures of the candidates." He'll feel right at home there.
To keeps things perky, the cable channels have also been playing feverishly -- and often awkwardly -- with shots of the audience. While each speaker performs, the cameras create a second-level visual narrative involving audience faces. During Obama's keynote address, for example, the cameras kept cutting to black delegates. When Heinz Kerry spoke, they cut repeatedly to Hillary Rodham Clinton, hoping to establish a subtextual sisterhood between the two powerful women. The cameras also insist on catching celebrities such as Rob Reiner and Larry David at their most glum, and regular people at their most expressive. Carnivals trump the ordinary when it comes to TV, and so we see long images of delegates dancing to the witty and not-so-witty ("Shout" after the subdued Heinz Kerry?) song choices.
Is three hours enough for mainstream America? No. But TV isn't a handful of network choices anymore. In earlier decades, networks could afford to devote more hours to conventions because they didn't fret about ever-fragmenting audiences, or shrinking attention spans, or alienating viewers based on party identification. Now they operate under greater commercial pressures and a terror of down moments.
And now we have the option of exploring the DNC in cable, in all its untelegenic, riveting, boring glory. We just have to learn to go to it. Before we vote in November, we have to learn to vote with our remotes.
Television critic Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com.
