Since 1976 political conventions have been made for TV productions, with the party’s leaving nothing to chance to detract from the coverage of their nominee. This year that’s close to going out the window.
“We’re in uncharted territory in every way,” said ABC News Political Director Rick Klein. “Things that are happening now are things that you spend decades expecting that could possibly happen under some scenario but we’ve seen time and again this election defy expectations and we’re now on the precipice of something that has no precedent at all in modern American politics."
Klein, who was married in Cleveland, was back in town to scope out locations for ABC’s coverage of the convention, which will have many moving parts.
“You have to expect the unexpected. I mean every time we’ve seen something that we thought we knew how it would develop we were totally and absolutely wrong.
“So right now a lot of the planning and the coverage is around knowing that there is this daily drumbeat of a campaign and then there is something else happening this summer, this convention right here in Cleveland,” he said.
“So it’s a lot it is learning, researching and reporting and trying to just see a little bit around the corner in this year that has surprised everyone at every turn.”
The story that is the 2016 race for the White House is one with many different layers as candidates fight for votes in states that have yet to vote and delegates in the states that have already voted not to mention questions about security, protests and the deal making that would come into play if it’s a contested convention.
“The good news that no one else knows what they’re doing coming into it either. It’s not like anyone has seen this before, everyone has kind of equal footing at the beginning of this. All you can do is prepare and be talking to the right people that might know how this might break down. No one has a firm sense of where this is headed,” Klein said.
Klein tweeted Saturday “Been in Cleveland a few days for RNC planning. 100 days out, I've never seen a city this excited for a convention. Also, a little scared.”
His Twitter feed is active these days and an example of the ever changing role social media plays for the networks in covering a political year like this.
“I think we have to meet the political consumer where they want to be met and that means producing content in every way possible. That means tweeting and Facebook and social media. It means podcasts and radio, it means television, it means digital video to a large extent, it means dot.com stories.
“There are so many different ways to communicate with our viewers that are non-traditional. Iit’s not just about what’s on the evening news, that’s just a tiny fraction of what we do.”
Klein said its much like an iceberg with only so much showing above the water.
“So much of what we do does not surface on television,” he said. “So if you watch World News Tonight, if you watch Good Morning America, you see the best of it but you don’t see all of it.”
He pointed to a podcast, ABC News Powerhouse Politics he recently started with Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl.
“We are, to put it frankly, dorking out on delegate math on that podcast. Those kinds of conversations don’t lend themselves to World News Tonight but they’re terrific for what we do. Similar if you were to read my twitter feed it would be unintelligible to many people. Unless you know what rule 40b is in the Republican Convention, it doesn’t make sense to you, that’s not something we’re going to talk about on Good Morning America but it is something we know there’s an intense interest in,” he said.
“It’s a story unlike any other and it’s a political year unlike any other. So I think it’s a question of just trying to develop as much content in as many different innovative ways as you can.”
