“Those who want the convention can find it on C-SPAN or whatever.”
Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images
This story is featured in Buffering, Vulture’s newsletter about the entertainment industry. Sign up at vulture.com/buffering!
The Trump administration is hoping its upcoming and unprecedented midterm-election convention in Dallas will play out just like your typical presidential-nominating convention: a celebrity-packed and raucous building, lawmakers at every level of government frothing to get as close to the headliners as possible, and wall-to-wall coverage by all the major news networks resulting in tens of millions of eyeballs.
But judging by the lead-up to the event, that’s not what’s going to happen. Realistically, the Dallas convention is unlikely to get the same level of national attention a presidential-year convention would, according to the major news networks Vulture spoke with this week. For Donald Trump and his Republican loyalists, the goal was to produce a glitzy, splashy, must-watch show serving the GOP’s most alluring arguments and figures to a wide audience. Instead, the indicators are that the news networks — the venues that Trump obsesses over and are essential for any major political event to break through — will treat this more like a normal Trump rally.
And they have good reason to. For weeks, lawmakers have complained about exorbitant fees for the privilege of attending their own party’s event — with some VIP tickets costing as much as $250,000 and lawmakers having to cough up $25,000 to attend. The Wall Street Journal reported that a picture with President Trump will go for $88,000 a pop. And there has been a bevy of reporting about how burdensome and expensive attending a convention in Dallas a few months before an ominous election will be for those same elected GOP officials expected to show up. All of this casts doubt on whether the event will pull the kind of star power that entices TV networks to break their regular prime-time programming and compel viewers to skip an NFL game to tune in.
It’s hard to compare the Dallas convention to a typical presidential-nominating convention because those usually stretch out over four nights and have generally enjoyed a collective average of around 20 million viewers across networks — and even bigger numbers when the nominees themselves speak. This two-day midterm convention will almost certainly not pull that kind of interest at any point, even if all the networks were to cover it live.
As a result, the live affair is likely to be skipped by most of broadcast television, according to the major news networks Vulture spoke with. Not every broadcast and cable network confirmed their final plans on the record, but the ones that did respond largely signaled plans to only focus on just the major speeches. The rest of the convention would be televised only if something newsy or interesting happens, and most likely after the fact.
Those who want the convention can find it on C-SPAN or whatever.
CBS News, for example, is among the major networks that will not be breaking its usual programming next week. The news organization, now under Bari Weiss’s editorial control, will “cover it like we cover a typical Trump-Vance speech,” a source with knowledge of the network’s plans tells Vulture. Its news division will “report on it, certainly,” but it won’t be the kind of all-hands-on-deck situation you’d expect during a presidential-year convention.
Other networks signaled that they are either still figuring out how to handle the event or would inject a healthy dose of coverage depending on how everything unfolds. ABC says it is “still finalizing plans,” and NBC News is staying mum for now. Fox News did not immediately respond to inquiries, but it’s not hard to imagine even that network — yes, the one founded by Rupert Murdoch — maintaining most of its usual programming mixed with live break-ins rather than continuously streaming the goings-on in Dallas. More predictably, multiple employees at both CNN and MS NOW tell Vulture that those networks will treat the convention for what it actually is — a really long Trump rally. That means sending reporters and having a correspondent on the ground for live shots. That also means covering the major headliner speeches — Trump and Vice-President J.D. Vance — live for at least a little while.
“We’re sending folks like we always do to this sort of stuff,” a news director for one of the major networks says, “not because we think this will be news, but because we want to be prepared on the off chance there’s something interesting. And our people are good enough to figure out how to use an event like this as a sourcing opportunity.”
Of course, you can expect the most conservative of the cable-news channels will break from the pack. NewsNation has specialized coverage planned, starting with a “two-hour prime-time broadcast both nights” featuring its chief Washington anchor, Leland Vittert. On both nights, NewsNation will start its coverage with a “special edition of Cuomo at 8 p.m.”
One America News Network is getting in on the action as well. OANN spokesperson Charles Herring told Vulture over email that it will have “multiple reporters on sight [sic], including our Chief White House Correspondent, Daniel Baldwin,” adding, “We anticipate bringing our viewers extensive coverage.” Asked if that meant coverage of all the event’s speeches or just the major ones, Herring said, “Our news director will be making the call based on breaking news and other factors. All key speeches are likely to be fully covered with OAN dipping in and out of other program events.”
A spokesperson for Newsmax did not respond to our questions, but the conservative network has a history of extensively covering Trump speeches in the same way a sports network would cover a championship game. And its audience all but expects it: The network has boasted soaring viewership whenever Trump speaks. It would be more surprising if Newsmax didn’t cover the GOP convention exactly the way Trump expects it to.
Do Republicans want this to air live on national television?
The wide range of coverage plans between news organizations points to the glaring issue with Trump’s big event: The “convention” conceit is misleading at best. Traditionally, a political convention happens every four years so a party can nominate its presidential candidate, even if it’s a mostly symbolic gesture for a person who has already won their primaries. All that hoopla results in a heavy lift for news networks and involves haggling over the real estate for anchor booths and transmission facilities. There’s also a process for figuring out which network is responsible for providing the overall feed that all the other news outlets pull from. And then there’s the logistics of turning a big arena into something that can house lot of people, a lot of networks, and all the equipment and machinery that the crew and camera operators need.
All of that bureaucracy and labor isn’t quite happening for Dallas. The news bigwigs are thinking of it less like a party convention and more like a multiday celebration of all things Trump.
“Donald Trump may want to call it a convention, but it isn’t a convention,” a former top broadcast official who has handled past convention planning told me. “There are no delegates. There’s no platform. There are no candidates being nominated. It’s a rally.”
The executive added, “It’s conceivable to me that some of the right-leaning networks — Newsmax, Fox, One America — will set up an anchor position to be there, but I suspect the others are going to treat it like Trump-a-palooza.”
Another veteran executive of multiple newsrooms pointed at what networks would have to sacrifice to cover the event fully. “If you’re a broadcast network, your audience is going to be pretty irritated,” the executive told me, ticking off what the GOP shindig will be competing with: prime-time sporting events and popular fall programming. Especially if there’s a big sporting event — for instance, the first night of the convention coincides with the NFL season opener, a Super Bowl rematch between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots. That will almost certainly be of more interest to the majority of viewers. “Those who want the convention,” the executive says, “can find it on C-SPAN or whatever.”
And then there’s another question looming for the Republican lawmakers, donors, and rank and file: Do they want this to air live on national television? Going into the midterms, Trump’s approval numbers are deeply underwater. A candidate would be forgiven for not wanting to associate too closely with a pseudo-Trump rally, and indeed, a fair share of Republicans have come up with excuses not to go.
In more normal times, there might be one other rub to this convention. Since it is an obviously political event featuring political candidates, networks that cover it would probably have to provide equal time to the opposing candidate to follow the Federal Communications Commission’s equal-time rule. Usually that’s taken care of by airing both party conventions — but Democrats aren’t holding any such midterm equivalent.
But yet another type of danger lurks for networks not covering Trump’s convention, says former FCC commissioner Tom Wheeler: the president himself.
“My guess is that Trump wants this covered and that [FCC Chairman Brendan] Carr will go along, including haranguing the networks if they don’t provide gavel-to-gavel,” Wheeler says.
It’s easy to picture the convention getting overall viewership numbers well below what ratings-obsessed Trump would like, triggering the president to rage against the networks for being biased or unfair. As Wheeler points out: “Take a look at how Trump has kept ABC’s The View from hosting political candidates.”
Sign Up for BUFFERING
Vulture’s insider newsletter on the streaming industry from editor Joe Adalian.
Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice
Related