Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 07:16 pm
The party with the reality TV show star running for president, who in 2015 got 327 minutes of coverage compared to 141 minutes for Clinton And Sanders coverage, complained today about what they feel is uneven coverage between the conventions.
Republicans whined about “liberal media bias” after their reality TV show star turned out a network dud of a convention:
“Traditionally, TV networks ABC, NBC and CBS have worked to ensure fairness giving each party the primetime hour of 10:00PM to 11:00PM on Monday through Thursday of their respective parties’ conventions. While speeches can go over allotted time, they strive for parity,” the GOP press release began.
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They went on, “Well that changed this year. As the Democrats’ final night gets underway, we can see quite clearly that each network have given anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes extra per night of primetime coverage to the DNC. And this isn’t just due to long speeches alone. All three networks cut away before 11PM on Monday night of the RNC’s convention when Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), a rising star in our party, had yet to speak.”
They say based on their analysis, things were unfair, “Based on our analysis, the networks from nights 1 thru 3, gave the DNC 13 hours and 21 minutes of coverage, while giving the RNC 9 hours and 47 minutes during the same nights. Democrats have been given nearly 40 percent more time during prime time to get their message out.”
Republicans should have understood the problem when they had to use Joni Ernst as their “rising star” and biggest get of the convention other than Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. A rising star isn’t a star.
A star would be… Oh, say a former President, like President Bill Clinton. Or a real star like Elizabeth Banks or America Ferrera. Lena Dunham. Meryl Streep for God’s sake. These are stars.
So it makes sense that Democrats might have gotten more coverage. The Democrats had a sitting President, a former President, numerous actual stars (not reality TV show wannabes), and numerous party leaders who are political leaders.
But Republicans shouldn’t be too upset; the less people who saw the RNC, the better for the Republican Party. And they’ve gotten tons of free press due to Donald Trump’s showmanship.
This isn’t a case of liberal media bias, if in fact their calculations are accurate. It’s a matter of networks wanting to make money and producers making choices about what will bring in the money and what won’t.
Tweny-eight more minutes of death, doom and America sucks versus 28 more minutes of Sarah Silverman and Barack Obama. The choice was made for the networks.
Donald Trump brags that he knows the television business, but if he really understood television, he would know that the first of TV is to always entertain. Trump’s convention was not entertaining. It was a dark and gloomy convention that was more public access television than star studded entertainment spectacular that Trump promised.
The stars are shining brightly in Philly, while Trump’s dud came, went, and was quickly forgotten.
Republicans want to blame the media, but the problem isn’t the networks. The GOP’s biggest problem remains Donald J. Trump.
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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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