The good news about the Republican convention: Few speeches will be longer than 10 minutes. The bad news: There will be dozens of them.
Organizers of the Aug. 12-15 presidential nominating convention at San Diego are working hard to make the four-day Bob Dole love-fest palatable to television viewers, but they realize this may be an uphill fight."We've been doing conventions the same way for 100 years: Politicians stand up, make long speeches, and basically, that's it," said Mark Sanders, a convention spokesman. "In the day of the (television) remote control, you can't do a convention like that . . . with all the other entertainment options out there, they'll go someplace else."
To rein in the long-winded, only a few speakers - presumably including the laconic all-but-certain nominee Dole - will be permitted to talk more than 10 minutes. Most speeches will be five or six minutes long, Sanders said.
A partial list of speakers reads like a Who's Who of the Republican Party: George Bush and his son, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, Gerald Ford, Nancy Reagan, New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, retired Gen. Colin Powell and New York Rep. Susan Molinari, the keynote speaker.
To draw and keep a television audience, Sanders said the Republicans plan to use all the media frills they can, including satellite technology, video and Internet "chat rooms." Following the party's theme in spotlighting "unsung heroes who have set Republican ideas into action for the betterment of their own neighborhoods, their own communities and their own states," the convention will highlight everday accomplishments of ordinary people.
But this message will be delivered in multimedia style.
"Rather than lecture the audience, we're going to try to tell them stories," Sanders said.
For example, the story of welfare might be told in a video clip of a welfare mother who, through the aegis of some Republican program, has managed to extricate herself from the cycle of public assistance and poverty. The video clip could be followed by a live appearance by the woman or a live satellite hookup from her home, Sanders said.
Some speakers will go directly from the podium to an area set aside for Internet "chat rooms" to field questions and join discussions on the global computer network.
The convention venue, the San Diego Convention Center, is smaller than previous sites, and organizers plan to make a virtue of ne-ces-sity and create a more "intimate" atmosphere, starting with the speakers' podium. Past conventions for both parties have featured massive fortress-like podiums creating a barrier between speakers and the rowdy delegates on floor. This time the Republicans will have a lower platform.
Because fewer people will be able to fit into the hall, the Republicans are reaching out to the public and to the media outside, of-fering one-on-one satellite interviews with local television and radio stations.
Sanders acknowledged that drawing consistent viewers to the convention may be difficult, noting that in earlier presidential election years 65 percent of people who knew about the political conventions never watched them.
Figures from the Nielsen television rating organization bear this out: in 1992, only 3.9 million households were tuned to the Republican convention out of 93 million U.S. households with televisions.
The Democrats did slightly better, with 4.1 million households. But neither came close to the Nielsen winner in late July of this year, when 26.8 million households tuned in to the Summer Olympic Games.