Obama's convention speech disrupts network plans

By Paul J. Gough

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Barack Obama's decision to accept the Democratic presidential nomination at a Denver football stadium instead of at a smaller arena throws a wrench into the networks' coverage plans.

No network has finalized its plans for covering the Democratic National Convention in the Mile High City (August 25-28) or the Republican event in St. Paul, Minn. (September 1-5). But the networks have budgeted millions of dollars, from transporting anchors and staff both cities to the costs of cameras and cables and dozens of other line items. The decision, announced Monday, to move Obama's closing-day acceptance speech from the 19,000-seat Pepsi Center to the 76,000-seat Invesco Field has upended what the networks had thought was the plan with less than two months to go.

"It's going to cost us all more than we budgeted, and we'll have to figure out how to handle it," CBS News senior vp Paul Friedman said.

Early steps were made Monday, when the networks had a conference call to decide what to do. Fox News Channel previously had been selected to handle the pool coverage, and that won't change. Marty Ryan, executive producer of political coverage at Fox News, said some resources originally earmarked for the venue over four days will move to Invesco for the convention's final day.

"It's just a question of how big in each place," Ryan said. "That we're still resolving."

But what's certain is that the networks will have to spend millions more in total to cover the Democratic convention, and they already are over budget.

Covering the political conventions has grown less important to the broadcast networks, which no longer provide the gavel-to-gavel coverage they did years ago. That's been supplanted mostly by cable coverage, with ABC, CBS and NBC devoting about an hour a night Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday before the nominee's acceptance speech Thursday. The networks say the conventions are, for the most part, not news. There isn't a lot of suspense with the nominations locked up long ago.

"Certainly for the networks, it's going to raise the issue as to whether we really need to do Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday," Friedman said. "It's the kind of issue we've all danced around: How much convention coverage is necessary when there are no news developments?"