Setting Coverage Apart at Crowded Conventions

News nets head south in search of own slice of political stories

By Andrea Morabito -- Broadcasting & Cable, 8/20/2012 9:00:31 AM

Mitt Romney may have already announced his vice-presidential pick in Paul Ryan, but TV news producers are betting on plenty of other stories coming out of the Republican National Convention Aug. 27-30 in Tampa, Fla., and Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C. Sept. 4-6.

With every news network planning a presence and dozens of anchors heading south, viewers (many of whom will be tuning into the presidential race for the first time, producers say) will have no shortage of options. While networks are keeping specific details close to the vest, we asked several what will distinguish their coverage in 2012:

ABC News will leverage its partnerships with Yahoo and Univision through 30 hours of anchored live-stream coverage on ABC News Digital and Yahoo platforms and tapping contributions from Univision anchors Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas on the Latino vote. "I'm confident we will reach millions more people in ways other than television," says Marc Burstein, senior executive producer of ABC News special events.

CBS News will bring the same sensibility to its convention coverage as it does to its other newscasts. "We intend on being a very serious broadcast that has value added to it," says Susan Zirinsky, who will executive-produce the coverage alongside Al Ortiz, EP of special events. Scott Pelley will anchor the on-air coverage as well as nightly Webcasts before and after the broadcast.

NBC News will draw on the networks and platforms of the NBCUniversal family, like Hispanic-targeted Telemundo, the business perspective of CNBC and African American site theGrio, giving NBC's coverage a breadth from "journalists whose focus are those things," says senior VP of NBC News special Mark Lukasiewicz.

CNN will have all hands on deck, sending 19 on-airs to one or both of the conventions, which will be covered in every hour of the network's schedule. This year it will turn its CNN  Gril into a broadcast facility; programs will originate from there when nothing is happening in the convention halls. "It will in many ways be an after-party program to talk about the day's proceedings," says Sam Feist, CNN Washington bureau chief and senior VP.

MSNBC will treat the conventions as a national event, sending a group of its anchors to the host cities and broadcasting a split primetime show from the sports studio at 30 Rock in New York to take advantage of the better technology it offers. In addition to Tampa and Charlotte, the net will focus coverage on the key states for the general election like Ohio, Virginia, Colorado and Wisconsin. "We're going to be flexible," says MSNBC president Phil Griffin. If we need to send somebody to Wisconsin, we'll be there. This is a national convention."

Current TV, who won't be sending any of its primetime hosts to the conventions, will instead look to distinguish its coverage by tapping its user-generated roots and going "deeper into a social media experience than anybody has done on television yet," says Current TV president David Bohrman.

Fox News had not announced its convention coverage plans as of press time and did not respond to an interview request.