Subject: The Boom-Boom Ticket 
Date: Published: 7/20/92 (110 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    LEISURE & ARTS -- Television:
    The Boom-Boom Ticket
    ----
    By Robert Goldberg

    We heard a lot about change last week.  Mario Cuomo waxed eloquent
 about it.  Jesse Jackson sermonized on it.  Bill Clinton and Al Gore
 pitched it for all they were worth.  Even George Bush took time out
 from his fishing trip to say that gosh darn it, change is a pretty
 keen idea.
    But hot air aside, last week's Democratic convention did mark a
 kind of change, a milestone in the business of news and politics and
 the media.  As the crowds packed into Madison Square Garden, there
 were three journalists for every delegate.  And here's the
 interesting thing:  All those journalists knew there wasn't going to
 be any news at the convention.
    Now the old-style reporters -- like Sam Donaldson and New York
 Times staffers -- bemoaned the lack of news.  CBS and ABC didn't even
 want to be there.  They came grudgingly, when they came at all,
 chopping their coverage way back, and consistently cutting away from
 the proceedings in search of non-stories like "Is the Clinton
 campaign a little more or a little less standoffish to Jesse Jackson
 this evening vis-a-vis yesterday?  "
    But just as the networks were abdicating their traditional roles,
 a strange ragamuffin group was stepping up to fill the void.  CBS and
 ABC may have been slashing their hours, but for the first time you
 could get convention coverage on MTV, and on Comedy Central -- not
 to mention CNN and C-SPAN and a new PBS/NBC partnership.  What this
 motley band of new-style video journalists realized is that a modern
 convention may not be news -- but it is a TV show.
    "Welcome to `InDecision 92,'" said Al Franken.  "It is perhaps
 fitting that Comedy Central is bringing you about twice the coverage
 of any of the major broadcast networks, living as we do in an era
 where the wall between news and entertainment has been eaten away
 like the cartilage in David Crosby's septum."
    Up in the skybox, Joy Behar was conducting an interview:  "I'm
 here with Congressman Barney Frank, and we're listening to Mario
 Cuomo speaking...."  "Actually," Mr. Frank cut in, "we're not
 listening."  "We're trying to do both," said Ms. Behar.  "We're
 sitting up here with our backs to him and our earphones on," said
 Mr. Frank.  "Let's not lie to the American people."
    Over on MTV, a perky brunette cheerleader type named Tabitha
 Soren introduced convention correspondent Dave Mustaine -- lead
 singer of Megadeth.  "I'm not going to take any doublespeak," Dave
 announced, shaking his long red hair.  "Most of my college friends
 are freaking out.  There are no jobs for them.  That's where you get
 serial killers from -- people waiting tables when they have college
 degrees."
    Once Dave got a grip on himself, he took us on a tour of the
 convention, a fast-paced, quick-cut music-driven extravaganza, and
 I'll be darned if, at the end, politics didn't seem really cool.  Of
 course, Dave knew how to ask all the key questions, like "Want to
 see something heavy?  "  and "Is this patriotic or what?  "
    At every point on the dial last week, there were pundits.  ABC's
 Jeff Greenfield was as sharp as ever, and Cokie Roberts sharper
 still when she compared the Democratic Party to a girl "about to
 walk down the aisle with the boy she knows is good for her, but
 having a last minute romance with the boys {Mr. Cuomo, Mr. Jackson}
 that she's really in love with."
    The most intriguing marriage was the union of PBS and NBC, a
 union built on two weaknesses (PBS's lack of money and NBC's lack of
 air time) that became much more than the sum of the parts.  Where
 else would you find Theodore Sorenson discussing Cicero and
 Demosthenes, and Tom Brokaw weighing Frank Zappa and Jerry Garcia as
 VP candidates?  
    The joint MacNeil/Lehrer/Brokaw interview of Bill Clinton,
 revealing the candidate's weakness on foreign affairs and his
 strength on domestic, stood up especially well compared to Catherine
 Crier's interview of Al Gore on CNN, where she not only helped him
 lay out all the planks of the party platform, she handed him the
 hammer and the nails and stood back to watch him work.
    But when it came to punditry, the most eye-opening feature was a
 bunch of regular folks on CNN sitting in a living room in Midwest
 City, Okla.  After several speeches, these couch potatoes offered up
 instant analysis every bit as cogent as the pros:  "I consider Jerry
 Brown a lightweight," stated one woman.  "He might have just hurt the
 party unity," said another.  The journalists didn't have much more to
 say.
    Which is why C-SPAN emerged as the media hero of the convention.
 "I don't need somebody making a million dollars a year telling me
 what I just heard," said one call-in viewer.  "I got July 19, 1992,
 ears, I can hear."  Despite shaky camerawork and interminable
 coverage, the no-nonsense C-SPAN was a winner for those who just
 wanted to watch, to judge for themselves, not be lectured.
    In the end, C-SPAN and the other new media outlets were important
 because they understood what the convention was about.  There was
 news at Madison Square Garden, but the old media -- poking and
 asking questions and running around -- didn't know where to find it.
 They were looking for facts, substance.
    The news was the TV program.  The news was:  You're the Democratic
 Party, and you're given this spectacle, this free air time, what do
 you choose to show, what do you choose to say?  What image do you
 sell?  What TV program do you produce?  
    In short, the news was the entertainment -- and the entertainment
 was all about subliminal messages of youth, vitality, the next
 generation:  Aretha Franklin singing "The Star Spangled Banner."  A
 young man and woman movingly describing a struggle with AIDS.  A
 video wall.  Jobs and the environment.  Women, articulate women, lots
 of articulate women.  Two handsome, unlined faces, a baby boom duo --
 the boom-boom ticket, rocking out with Fleetwood Mac.  A presidential
 candidate who can play the sax and balance a budget.  That was last
 week's TV program, and I've got to admit, I liked it.

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