Publication: The Rise and Fall of the Televised Political Convention
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1998-10
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Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy
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Karabell, Zachary. "The Rise and Fall of the Televised Political Convention." Shorenstein Center Discussion Paper Series 1998.D-33, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, October 1998.
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Abstract
In “The Rise and Fall of the Televised Political Convention,” Zachary Karabell traces the history of the broadcast conventions, building a strong case for the proposition that the parties and the networks together have brought the conventions to a low ebb.
Whether the networks or the parties are chiefly responsible for the conventions’ declining stature is not the issue here. The critical fact is that self-interested parties and self-interested networks got caught in what Sissela Bok calls a “vicious circle” that, in the end, has made the voters the real losers. They no longer have the option of watching at length the vigorous give and take that characterizes party politics at its best.
In his wonderfully lucid and richly descriptive paper, Karabell takes the reader through what he describes as the three phases of the broadcast conventions: 1952–1968, when they were “shared political events”; 1972–1988, when they became “stage-managed events”; and 1992–1996 when they were “over-mediated” by both the candidates and the networks.
Karabell is one of the country’s most promising young historians. A recent Harvard Ph.D., he has decided, at least at the start of his career, to pursue his profession as a full-time writer based in New York rather than as an academic historian. He is currently writing a book on the 1948 presidential campaign.
Karabell is too insightful an analyst to claim that the televised convention can somehow be restored to its former prominence. Yet he recognizes that more than a link to our political past would be lost if the networks drop their live coverage of all but the acceptance speeches. He suggests that party leaders and network executives, and ultimately the American people, could benefit from a rethinking of the purpose and coverage of the conventions. And it is certainly the case that those in politics and in the news media, as well as interested citizens, could benefit from a reading of Zachary Karabell’s carefully crafted paper.