C-SPAN, 2:00 p.m. ET
Yesterday’s scheduled Day 1 of the 2012 Republican National Convention was canceled due to inclement weather (and, I suspect, media apathy as well). So today’s schedule is jam-packed – though the broadcast networks are sticking to their original, barely covering schedule. For a history of the shifting treatment of televised political conventions, see
Bianculli’s Blog. But this year, as for several decades now, the one place to go for unadulterated coverage is C-SPAN. So always start there, and, no matter where else you turn, use it as a control group – to show you what the other networks
could be showing.
Various Networks, Check local listings
This is a catch-all listing for the major coverage today. CNN, Fox News and MSNBC will be talking about the convention all day, though don’t expect any of them to sideline their regular anchors and pundits for the occasion. As for commercial broadcast TV, CBS, NBC and ABC all are devoting the 10 p.m. ET hour – but only that hour – to prime-time convention coverage. Other, more specialized coverage is listed separately.
PBS, 7:00 p.m. ET
Here’s broadcast TV convention coverage the way it used to be: consuming all of prime time, with smart people on hand to analyze events and put them into context. Good for PBS. Good thing for viewers. Judy Woodruff and Gwen Ifill co-anchor. Check local listings.
Current, 7:00 p.m. ET
This begins at 2 p.m. ET, with Current TV taking two different approaches to coverage. One sounds really good, because it features former presidential candidate Al Gore, along with other Current TV colleagues, such as Jennifer Granholm and Eliot Spitzer, presiding over convention activities and providing analysis. The other idea, though, sounds really bad: a live mega-tweet of pertinent Twitter feeds from various sources, both political and individual. That’s not a TV show, folks. That’s a website feature. Even Current TV can take the idea of video democracy, on which it’s founded, too far.
Comedy Central, 11:00 p.m. ET
And finally, when convention activities end, the best part of the day begins, as Jon Stewart and company make sense, and nonsense, of it all. Recently, the intrepid comic correspondents were shown training for the Tampa humidity by interviewing people in saunas. If you watch only one TV source for your convention news this week, you could do a lot worse. And I’m not joking.