Gustav vs. Politics on News Networks
For the cable news networks, the national Presidential conventions are like the Olympics in ratings. CNN is going gangbusters with their Democratic National Convention coverage, and pulled in averaged 5.38 million viewers from 10 to 11 p.m. Wednesday, when VP nominee Joe Biden spoke and Presidential nominee Barack Obama made a “surprise” appearance. That was only slightly less than NBC’s 5.8 million viewers for the same time period, and CNN’s average for the night was up 95 percent over their coverage of the same night during the 2004 convention.
Unfortunately for the folks who make the programming decisions at CNN and the other national newsrooms, they are facing the Perfect Storm, which is better known as Tropical Storm Gustav. The system is expected to become a Category 3 hurricane before it hits land somewhere between the Alabama Gulf Coast and the Texas coastline. It’s current bulls-eye is near New Orleans. And in case you haven’t read or seen any coverage, tomorrow is the three-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of that area.
So what are news networks who have all their resources in Denver for the DNC and Minneapolis/St. Paul for the Republican National Convention going to do with the possibility of another Gulf Coast disaster growing stronger by the hour?
If you’re CNN’s Anderson Cooper, you’re heading to New Orleans immediately after Obama’s keynote Thursday night. Cooper, who became known as the face of Katrina and has visited the city at least 20 times since, told The Hollywood Reporter that things had appeared to have gotten much better in that area during the past seven months.
“To have it be on the third anniversary of Katrina, if you wrote it in a script or in a book, you wouldn’t believe it,” Cooper said to THR.
According to THR, CNN is moving much of its personnel to the Gulf Coast or back to New York, where they could be more easily deployed for hurricane coverage once forecasters know definitively where it’ll land.
NBC is sending Lester Holt and other personnel, some of whom have just returned from the Olympics and Beijing. They’re in an especially difficult spot, since they’re providing pool coverage for all the networks at the RNC.
As the days before U.S. landfall come and the possibility of Gustav becoming another Katrina or (hopefully) much less of a story, it will be interesting to see how the cable news networks juggle their obligation for RNC coverage with an even greater obligation to help the people affected by the storm find out information. Especially Fox News, who has had relatively weak ratings this week but who are probably counting on a huge Republican viewership.
Tags: anderson cooper, cnn, democratic national convention, gustav, lester holt, nbc, republican national conventionRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Network News, TV Ratings, Television Industry
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