Why do cable news channels talk over everything at the conventions?

[DeepModem Mom]

Kansas City Star: August 26, 2008
Why do cable news channels talk over everything at the conventions?
Aaron Barnhart

....When it comes to covering the political conventions...the cable news channels are really no improvement over the broadcast networks. They'd still rather listen to themselves talk than the people up on stage. They just do it longer. I don't get it. These channels...spend millions of dollars schlepping people and resources to an event and then spend 95 percent of their time not airing it. If someone tried that during the Oscars, they'd never work in that town again.

Well, we're told, that's because a political convention is nothing but one long infomercial and people wouldn't want to watch that. What an asinine argument. Almost every TV channel out there airs infomercials and people do watch them....

Conventions spew out tons of information that don't really need mediating -- you either get it or you don't -- and they serve the purpose of getting everyday people (not just journalists) thinking about the fall campaign. How is that not newsworthy? Why do you need Wolf Blitzer talking over every minute of it?

I'm not saying don't talk over the convention program. But really, it's not as though there was wall-to-wall speechifying going on up there on stage. John Legend and the band must have played for at least 30 minutes last night, in prime time. That talk-show thingy that Sherrod Brown and others were doing -- that went on too long, but a few minutes of it wouldn't have killed CNN (or MSNBC, which I was watching at the time)....

***

There is this insistence on talking over everything. Everyone except C-SPAN and PBS does it, and it's ridiculous. Jimmy Carter may be older than Methusaleh and reading off a script, but he's JIMMY CARTER, for heaven's sakes! Give him some air time.

And yeah, I'll feel the same way next week, too....

http://blogs.kansascity.com/tvbarn/2008/08/why-do-cable-ne.html#more

[grannie4peace]

1. to drive you to cspan :):):)

[Christa]

2. I feel the same aggrevation

I want to listen to the speakers :spank:

[sandyd921]

4. Listen on C-Span! n/t

[valerief]

3. Their job is to disseminate propaganda. That's why. nt

[Miss Authoritiva]

5. For those of us who have hearing problems....

For those of us who have hearing problems, trying to follow the coverage on CNN and MSNBC was nearly impossible. There were simply too many different layers of audio. FOX seemed to be a bit better in that the background sound was tamped down a little when their pundits were talking. I found the outdoor MSNBC segments hard to follow too; if it wasn't the wind blowing into the open mics it was the crowd (cheering or booing) in the background.

Absolutely the only way I could "hear" the convention was on CSPAN and PBS.

[DeepModem Mom]

6. I've started thinking of MSNBC as WWF (World Wrestling Federation)...

because of the yelling, cheering, booing, etc., going on in the badkground during their coverage. I have a very hard time hearing the coverage, too, and as far as I know I don't have a hearing problem. A very poor decision, IMO, to anchor outside.