Radio: The 120 Million Audience

TV’s three big networks this week are mobilizing some staggering forces and equipment for their 70-hour gavel-to-gavel coverage of the two political conventions. If 1956 fails to provide the best political show yet, it will certainly offer the biggest. Items:

¶ Ninety-six cameras will be deployed in Chicago and San Francisco to bring the big show (at a cost of $17 million) to a forecast 120 million people—the biggest mass audience in history (twice the number that saw the 1952 convention, twelve times the 1948 show).¶ New coaxial cables have been laid. Nearly 73,000 miles of TV channels will link400 stations in 270 U.S. cities. ¶ An electronic blanket has been thrown over both convention cities. To harness all the new gadgetry, some 2,700 radio-TV people have already swept into the Midwest, hauling 60 tons of electronic eavesdroppers (cameras no bigger than a Cracker Jack box), Dick Tracy walkie-talkies, mini-corders, creepie-peepies and giant telescopic cranes that can poke around into hotel windows from the street.¶ Automatic tabulating boards, flashing the changing total of delegation votes, will be superimposed on the viewer’s screen so that he will not lose sight of the main convention activity. ¶ Devices for splitting screens into five segments will enable viewers to see both the platform speaker and his party friends and foes at the same time. ¶ NBC will unveil an “ultra-portable” TV receiver so that delegates can see and talk with each other from different parts of the city, and viewers can watch them both on a split screen.¶ At Chicago’s Conrad Hilton Hotel, two entire floors are being transformed into TV studios; cameras are being moved in on floors where delegates will sleep, play and caucus. At San Francisco’s St. Francis Hotel, a special TV crew will lie in continuous wait for Harold Stassen. ¶ The networks have also marshaled a crew of caterers, cooks, maids, helicopter pilots, chauffeurs for VIPs, commercial plane pilots and swimming-pool attendants (for NBC’s plastic pool built especially to revive numbed delegates and newsmen). Betty Furness gets a whole new kitchen this year from Westinghouse (which is picking up a $5,000,000 tab for CBS for convention-through-election-night coverage), and a security guard to beat off the hungry. A recording company will offer free facilities to the 1,150 independent radio-TV newsmen for their small-town and foreign-based stations.

For the first time, the conventions are frankly being tailored to meet the demands of TV. With all the talk of “electronic journalism,” the show itself will have more to live up to this year: ¶ To brief the delegates and alternates—the real actors in the convention drama—and give them an idea of the camera’s X-ray powers, CBS last monthaired two (one for each party) closed-circuit “orientation broadcasts” to 167 affiliate stations, showing how TV plans to cover the conventions. Top commentators urged delegates to be “natural and sincere,” warned that the relentless camera catches not only the impassioned oratory but private mutterings and uncouth mannerisms as well.

¶ To minimize dull spots, convention machinery will grind faster. Promised Democratic Chairman Paul Butler: “We are planning a brisk, businesslike affair.”¶ The familiar red-white-blue bunting has been discarded in favorof “simple, dignified, and at the same time, traditional” decor, predominantly TV blue.

¶ Speakers’ platforms are gimmicked up to catch both festival and brawl. A teleprompter will be rigged alongside special air-blowers designed to keep speakers cool under the TV glare, and a built-in elevator at the rostrum is being installed to adjust the speakers’ height to the cameras (which are hard to move, what with delegates about). Instead of rows of dignitaries clogging the platform, only a few committeemen and VIPs will be onstage—against a bare backdrop. ¶ Republican Bertha Adkins, assistant to Chairman Leonard Hall, is handing out TV-inspired advice to the ladies: no large-brim hats or veils (“they might keep the televiewers from recognizing their delegates”), nothing white next to the face (“detracts from the skin tone of TV images”), no big-striped dresses or shiny jewelry. ¶ TV’s key men will scarcely be seen at all. TV Pool Director Bob Doyle (NBC) will call the shots, decide which of the images from scores of cameras will go inside the nation’s homes, offices and bars. Between acts the spotlight will fall on the sideshows: Will Rogers Jr., Arlene Francis, Dorothy Kilgallen, George Gallup, Dave Garroway et al. Walt Kelly’s Pogo, campaigning for President (on NBC) with “four buckets of cigar smoke,” hopes to “lull the regular parties into a false sense of security by repeated attempts to clarify the issues.”

Despite all the new equipment, no drastic departure in TV reporting is planned. Says Newsman Chet Hagen (NBC): “In ’52, the TV gimmick ran the newsmen. At these conventions the news will come first, even if we don’t always have a picture to go along with it.” Adds CBS Production Boss Paul Levitan: “There’s too much emphasis on folderol—that’s just the pad and pencil of the TV reporter. Our job is simply to report the news.”