Move over Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw. Make way for Megadeth's Dave Mustaine, Dr. Ruth Westheimer and "Saturday Night Live's" Al Franken.
The traditional networks -- CBS, NBC and ABC -- are planning cut-to-the-bone coverage of this week's Democratic National Convention. But that doesn't mean there will be less TV coverage for Bill Clinton & Co. in New York starting today.
In fact, there will be more overall convention coverage than ever before. Much of it will be different from what anyone is familiar with. And some traditional analysts have already started mocking it. But it promises to be more relevant and inclusive than what's gone before. And it's definitely plugged into larger forces of change in media and society.
The buzz in convention coverage is about cable raising its game to the next level. In 1988, the party gatherings were already called "the cable conventions," because CNN was the only network offering gavel-to-gavel coverage. But this year, CNN and C-SPAN's blanket coverage is going to be joined by in-the-convention-hall efforts from MTV, the Nostalgia Channel, Comedy Central, Black Entertainment Television (BET) and other highly targeted cablecasters offering coverage focused for the concerns of their niche audiences.
Some applaud the development.
"I think anything that draws more people into the political process and makes them aware of the issues and the candidates is a positive," Bob Furnad, executive vice president of CNN, told a group of TV critics gathered in Los Angeles for the fall preview press tour.
But others disagree, like an older critic who asked Furnad if having Mustaine cover the convention for MTV doesn't "say something terrible about what's happening."
What's happening is pretty simple, according to Tom Hannon, CNN's political director: "As the networks have retrenched in terms of news coverage, it's opened up the possibilities for not only CNN, but C-SPAN, BET and a lot of the cable channels to step in and fill the need."
Here's how they'll be trying to do that for their viewers this week.
"We'll be covering the conventions in our usual unconventional way," said MTV Vice President Judy McGrath. "All week, Tabitha Soren will be filing live reports from Madison Square Garden, and David Mustaine, of the rock band Megadeth, will supply commentary [from the convention floor].
