WASHINGTON — ABC, NBC and CBS all plan to skip one night of live prime-time coverage during each national party convention, offering one of the skimpiest broadcast schedules for the quadrennial political events since the early days of television.
The network plans, announced Monday by ABC and CBS and last week by NBC, call for the Democratic and Republican national conventions to get minimal prime-time broadcast coverage -- essentially, a total of three hours apiece for their four-day events.
As a result, President Bush, presumed Democratic challenger Sen. John F. Kerry and their respective running mates would each receive about an hour for network coverage of their nomination acceptance speeches. Four years ago, the networks gave Bush and Democrat Al Gore 90 minutes to two hours of coverage on the final nights of their nominating conventions.
Cut from this year's coverage plans are scheduled prime-time speeches by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) in Boston on July 27 and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in New York on Aug. 30.
The broadcast plans continue a trend in which networks have reduced convention coverage as the political parties have turned once-unpredictable events into highly choreographed coronations.
Few, if any, platform fights are expected this year at either convention. The last doubts about the roster of nominees all but disappeared last week with Kerry's selection of Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina as his running mate.
Still, party officials are counting on greater public interest in the 2004 conventions because of the Iraq war, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the nation's stubbornly deep partisan divide. Polls show that voters are paying more attention to the presidential election than they did at a comparable point four years ago.
"We are surprised that any network would take a pass on any one of the nights of the convention," said Leonardo Alcivar, a spokesman for the Republican National Convention. He said the networks, by declining to broadcast the GOP's opening night, would miss not only McCain but also former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and "a stirring tribute" to President Reagan.
Democrats, for their part, announced Monday that they planned to showcase the late president's son Ron Reagan in a convention speech advocating greater federal support for stem-cell research. Reagan's family has taken up the cause in response to his long battle with Alzheimer's disease, but the appearance of any Reagan at a Democratic event is bound to draw notice.
