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Networks have a secret ally to help them cover two big stories at once, reports Jeremy W. Peters. And it’s already infiltrated your home!
Michael Clemente, executive vice president for news at Fox News, said that even if the storm becomes so severe that it warrants split-screen coverage with the convention, such coverage is hardly a rare event in today’s hyperactive news cycle. Larger, more rectangular television screens now allow cable news channels to offer three screens at once. “There’s more real estate now,” he said.
That real estate may go unclaimed: NBC and CNN spokespeople told Politico’s Dylan Byers “split screen” may not actually mean split screen.
But there are only so many correspondents among the 15,000 journalists reportedly in Tampa for the RNC who can credibly fill those screens, split or not. So PBS went back to regular programming Monday night. “We tend not to put Judy Woodruff on a beach,” a “PBS NewsHour” spokesperson told Peters. Diane Sawyer stayed put in Tampa and Anderson Cooper and Shepard Smith worked out of New Orleans.
Smith, Alessandra Stanley writes, “seemed delighted to be back in New Orleans, bracing for the worst.”
He said it was “almost comical” that as many as 15,000 journalists were signed up to cover the convention, describing it as little more than a “staged infomercial.”
Optics — yes, optics — reared their not necessarily ugly head:
The buzzword of the day was “optics,” as anchors discussed how the Romney campaign would handle the dreaded split screens, which by Tuesday, could juxtapose Ann Romney’s speech with live footage of desperate storm victims seeking shelter.
Patrick Gavin, still the only must-follow with tweets about the Republican convention, rounds up the optics-talk in 12 quotes:
5. “So maybe the biggest problem Republicans will have is optics. You can’t have Kid Rock tearing down the house while Isaac tears down houses.” — CNN’s Carol Costello on Monday.
Erik Wemple writes about meta-optics, arguing it’s not necessary to worry about how one giant news deployment may be hurt by another potentially giant news deployment. With so many journalists twitching around Tampa, the convention will do OK, coverage-wise:
If you posit that stories contemplating the degree to which the storm is stealing the focus from the convention actually constitutes showering the convention with attention, then perhaps Isaac is boosting attention to the convention.
