Networks to Cut Out Ann Romney Coverage

Three of the major networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC, will not broadcast Ann Romney’s address to the Republican National Convention Monday night, The New York Times’ Jeremy Peters reports.

Instead, the networks will all be showing crime dramas. CBS will run “Hawaii Five-O,” ABC “Castle,” and NBC “Grimm.” The networks have informed the Romney campaign they will broadcast just an hour of convention coverage on the final three nights. The decision leaves the opening night of the convention in the hands of cable.

“I don’t think it’s the decision that Bill Paley would have made,” Russ Schriefer, a senior Romney adviser, told the Times. He was referring to the executive who ran CBS during the halcyon days of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite.

The networks are scaling back their coverage of both conventions from four years ago, leaving the gavel-to-gavel duties to cable or the web.

“You know, we’re going to be live-streaming, so there is available live coverage minute by minute for everybody in this country,” Diane Sawyer, the ABC anchor, told the Times. “When you look back historically at the kind of coverage you were saturated in before, if you add in cable and online streaming and tweeting and blogging, pound for pound do we have less?”
Fox News’ Chris Wallace said he was not anticipating the excitement of 2008.

“Will Obama’s speech be the same? Probably not,” he told the Times. “And I agree that as interesting a figure and as consequential a figure as Paul Ryan is, it won’t be another Palin moment.”