Stratégies · 2004
Bush/Kerry: the great marketing circus
Translated from the French. Original: Stratégies, September 9, 2004 · French version
No. 1336 - 09/09/2004 - INTERNATIONAL
Bush/Kerry: the great marketing circus
New York, Benjamin Cohen and David Benaym
In the United States more than anywhere else, the media and politicians agree on running a campaign as a show. A few weeks before the big match in November, a report on the Democratic and Republican conventions.
A summer full of campaigning for the American media. For two months, newsrooms concentrated all their efforts on covering the conventions, the two big political events before the vote. The Democratic Party took over Boston, the hometown of candidate John Kerry, for a week at the end of July. A month later, the Republicans chose New York for its symbolism as a terrorist target. Basically, the two events resemble the good old summer schools of our political parties. But only basically.
A political and media circus
The official nomination of the candidates for the White House, the original purpose of these big gatherings, actually serves as a huge marketing operation for the parties. The polls are very sensitive to these two weeks of political show. This year again, no fewer than 15,000 journalists made the trip to Boston and to New York. All the networks turned their schedules upside down to fit in a few hours of live coverage. As a result, budgets run into hundreds of millions of dollars. The country’s news stops for a week. Activists and demonstrators flock in by the thousands to parade in front of the cameras. And every day everything is planned around prime time and the next day’s front pages.
French politicians are the first to say so: “We have everything to learn from the Americans when it comes to political communication,” admits Pierre Moscovici, a foreign guest at the Democratic convention in Boston. The former Socialist minister for European affairs is in awe of the resources deployed for such an event and, of course, of the media return it generates. Even if, on site, the delegates of each state come to support their candidate with boundless fervour, the speakers are well aware that they are essentially addressing the millions of viewers who have never heard of them. The charm offensive then takes on a scale hard for us Europeans to imagine. The greatest actors and artists are called upon. So are renowned directors, like Steven Spielberg, who made the short film presenting John Kerry and his programme. The wives and children of the two candidates are mobilised, briefed and formatted before singing the praises of their heroes.
In New York, during the Republican invasion, the streets were full of demonstrators. New Yorkers had fled the city en masse. Jerry, 25, a young finance executive, had to stay in Manhattan. According to him: “The coverage of the conventions is essential to get to know the parties and the programmes better, and above all to listen to the speeches of a Clinton or a Schwarzenegger. I don’t know yet who I’ll vote for; the many channels covering the event allow me to better choose my level of information.”
ABC, customised news
It is partly for all these undecided voters that, inside the boiling arena of the Fleet Center or Madison Square Garden, Peter Jennings, the true figurehead of ABC, walks around with a cameraman at his side. He is there every day from 4 pm to 11 pm. As soon as a piece of news reaches him or he comes across a wild fan, he starts recording. He is a news baron in the United States. For more than 15 years he has anchored the flagship 7 pm newscast. The network took advantage of these conventions to launch a new on-demand news service with its star anchor. Internet users can also access ABC News
On Demand thanks to the interactivity of the Web. “We can say more, do longer reports with more content,” explains Jeffrey Schneider, spokesman for ABC News. Extended interviews, access to the network’s programmes around the clock, exclusive news to boost the new baby: ABC is betting on news to relaunch the network. For ABC News is much more than a simple newsroom serving the network.
A real commercial enterprise, it franchises its reports and footage like a news agency. Between the 200 ABC affiliates spread across the continent and foreign clients, thousands of hours of programming are transmitted every day by satellite through the News One network. ARD in Germany, NHK in Japan, the BBC and even the Qatari channel Al Jazeera get their supplies from ABC News. Millions of dollars in contracts offset the network’s losses on the entertainment side. The network’s employees wear many hats. They work across all the media on offer. “Typically, during a convention, our journalists start their day with a report in the morning for Good Morning America, then move on to a spot on radio, ABC News Radio, which is the country’s leading news station. Then they may be called on for ABC News Now or World News Tonight. Everyone works together, across all our media, radio, TV, Internet or digital,” says Jeffrey Schneider. This year, only 22 affiliates used ABC’s services to cover the convention on a local scale. Setting up studios inside Boston’s Fleet Center or New York’s Madison Square Garden, live satellite feeds, turnkey reports ready to air: the efforts are enormous.
When the affiliates do not come in person, they air ready-made reports, customised to give viewers the impression that their station is indeed present at the event. Local journalists then add voice-over commentary to suit the audience’s expectations. Clifford Feldman, an executive producer at FOX in Washington, explains that “stations often tailor the commentary to the audience. If you are in a Republican-leaning state like Texas, the commentary may be more favourable to Bush, and vice versa”. That is how ABC is America’s leading news provider. The network hammers home every day on its airwaves that “more Americans watch ABC News than any other broadcast network”.
Tradition versus ratings
A petty war broke out before the conventions over the networks’ decision (ABC,
CBS, NBC and FOX) to cut their coverage of the conventions to just 3 hours in prime time. David Westin, president of ABC News, explains why: “If we broadcast an extended version of our coverage, most Americans would want to watch other programmes, and our audience would spread to other channels. If the conventions themselves were as interesting as they were in 1948, 1956 or even 1968, we would not have this problem. But as we all know, they are not! Even if we wanted to push viewers to watch the programmes we think are good for them, we simply do not have that power.” All in agreement, the bosses of the big networks therefore agreed to air the same hours of programming together, a sort of telethon to save politicians, who are probably about to be relegated to the all-news channels in the years to come.
For convention coverage is much less lucrative than any other programme, in particular because live segments are not interrupted by commercials. But what drives the media to make such efforts to cover these national events? In the land of profit, it seems that tradition and patriotism still have a place. Just as French public television keeps airing religious programmes every Sunday morning that generate neither ratings nor profit, here on the private networks they religiously report on the exercise of democracy.
Jim Shaeffer
Executive producer of ABC7 in Washington, DC
Jim Sheaffer is an ABC veteran. Based in Washington for 25 years, he has covered 12 conventions as executive producer and knows the workings of the house well.
The link between politicians and the media is ambiguous. Who is serving whom in this kind of coverage?
It is a sort of traditional obligation to cover these conventions, even if they no longer excite many people. A form of civic duty. It is a platform that the networks offer the parties to present their programmes. But it is a bit of give and take. Even if it does not bring in much advertising revenue, it remains a way for the network to secure future big appointments with those in power.
Why is ABC putting so much energy into its new on-demand media?
ABC is very strong in terms of supplying information. News One is the leading provider of filmed news in number of clients, ahead of CNN. On the other hand, in terms of ratings, the affiliates and the network have been lagging for years. Often in fourth position behind
CBS, NBC and FOX. ABC On Demand is meant to be a response to this drop in ratings, a way to rejuvenate the network’s image and generate new revenue.
Fox News openly pro-Bush
The cable news channel of Rupert Murdoch’s group has been making headlines since the start of the campaign. Outfoxed, a documentary by Robert Greenwald released in early July in New York, convincingly demonstrates the channel’s Republican bias. Made up mainly of Fox News footage, it shows how this conservative outlet announces the presidential campaign through its star anchor: “Only a few months before President Bush’s re-election”. But the channel, inevitably unpopular among Democrats, took a beating in Boston. One evening, at the suggestion of one of the organisers, all the activists in the Fleet Center turned as one towards the Fox News studio perched above them and observed a minute’s silence. Unmoved, the channel continued to cover the events.
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