"They didn't suddenly get religion during the last four years - what they got are ratings and profits," says Mark Feldstein, professor of broadcast journalism at George Washington University and a former ABC investigative reporter. "The networks made money off the primary campaigns in 2008 for the first time in many, many elections, and they want to try to continue to cash in."
In July, CBS announced only three nights of coverage before adding tonight to its prime-time plan just two weeks ago. Paul Friedman, a senior vice president at CBS News, acknowledges still having mixed feelings about the extra night of coverage for what he has described as a "nonevent."
"Our job is to cover the news, and there is without a question less and less news at the conventions," says Friedman. "It is an enormous expenditure of money to cover these conventions the way we cover them, and I would rather that we consider whether we should take the money that is shorter and shorter in all media and use it to cover the campaign."
Friedman's explanation as to why his and the other networks are adding rather than subtracting hours this year: "First, I think we were all surprised by the amount of interest in the debates during the primary season, which exceeded our estimates, and I think we're all going on the assumption that there is still a good deal of interest in politics this year."
One of the biggest media stories of the primary season was not the rise of the Internet as many expected, but rather the sudden resurgence of what Friedman referred to as the cables. CNN was the first to "plant its flag" of high-powered, in-depth campaign coverage late last year when it seemed as if the networks could hardly be less interested, according to George Washington's Feldstein. MSNBC and Fox quickly joined the hunt, and everyone else has been playing catch-up with them since.
"We suspected this would be an unbelievable political year, but I don't think any us had any sense how intense the interest would be - to the degree that several million people would come to watch our big events, whether primary coverage or the debates," says David Bohrman, CNN senior vice president in charge of political coverage.
In addition to more manpower and hours of coverage than anyone except MSNBC, CNN will repeat its successful 2004 innovation of putting its anchors on the convention floor rather than in a skybox for an added sense of action and immediacy. MSNBC will counter with a mind-boggling 20 hours a day of live coverage from Denver (6 a.m to 2 a.m.) and an anchor lineup that includes Tom Brokaw.
