Political Conventions Can Learn From Reality Shows - Media Equation Joe

The following is an excerpt from an article in 

The New York Times
Monday, August 27, 2012

Political Conventions Can Learn From Reality Shows - Media Equation

By DAVID CARR

If the political conventions were managed like a typical television show that was losing audience, think of the meetings that would be held during the run-up.

TV Boss: “The cast is uninspired, the plots are unbearably boring and if I see one more man-on-the-street interview with someone covered in buttons wearing a funny hat, I’m going to snap.”

The tribal rituals of conventions — “Mr. Chairman, the people of the great state of Iowa, home of the finest hybrid seed corn ... ” — have their charms, but don’t seem relevant given that we’ve already been immersed like so many tea bags in a permanent presidential campaign through dozens of debates and thousands of dispatches on the Web and on cable television.

Both parties know they have a problem on their hands — they are making a television show that networks are reluctant to broadcast and viewers are reluctant to watch — and they have responded in different ways. The Democrats have gone leaner, cutting the number of days from four to three, and for a second consecutive cycle are leaving the convention hall for the final day by moving the president’s speech to a stadium.

Meanwhile, the Republicans are shining up the programming side of the equation for an event that was scheduled to start on Monday, but has been pruned by a day by Mother Nature and Tropical Storm Isaac. The G.O.P. has built a richly appointed $2.5 million stage and hired a former news producer from NBC to make sure things proceed in a television-friendly fashion.

But everyone knows that what is under way is not a news event so much as reality television. The conventions feature all the preening of the Westminster Dog Show, but none of the drama or actual competition. No matter how shiny the production, it will not satisfy a growing public need for verisimilitude and authenticity.

“A big part of the pleasure of reality TV, the bulk of television programming these days, is in the teasing out of what is real and what is not,” said Susan Murray, a professor of media, culture and communications at New York University. “Live political debates can give us these real moments, but the conventions do not. They’re so tightly scripted and rehearsed that there is little room for that kind of pleasure for a viewer.”

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