Why Do they Keep Interrupting?

I have been watching the Republican National Convention this week for several hours a day. Influential people are speaking with information I would like to  hear straight from their mouths. This is all part of the process for choosing the next President of the United States. Next week I will be watching the Democratic Convention.

Speakers at these conventions have been chosen to make the case for their candidates. They include governors, Congressmen, business leaders, pastors, celebrities and a few ordinary people. They also include others who ran in the primary and were defeated, They all have something to say that I’d like to hear. The same will be true next week. I want to be an informed voter.

Many television stations claim to be covering the convention. It seems, though, that if I really want to see the convention, I have to watch most of it on YouTube. Why? Because television commentators think that what they have to say is more important than what the speakers have to say.

I have been flipping between three stations which supposedly were covering the convention. One had its regular hosts on at their regular times and they would zero in on a speech. Then they would leave it in the background and start discussing it with a politician, a commentator, an analyst, or some other person in the convention hall. Meanwhile, I wanted to hear the rest of the speech.

So as soon as the host put the speech in the background, I flipped to the next channel and might have heard a bit more of that speaker before he or she was cut off again. Flipping to the to the third channel didn’t often produce a better result. I learned that if I want to really hear the complete speech, I have to leave their “coverage,” go into my office and sit in a not as comfortable chair, and watch it on YouTube.

I am an intelligent person. I can listen to a speech and comprehend what the speaker is saying. I don’t need to have someone tell me what is being said or why it may be important. I have the ability to make up my own mind. But only if I can hear the speech.

Flipping channels is not the ideal way to see what is happening at a convention. Neither is listening to people talking about what is happening so that I can’t hear it for myself. Every channel selects whom they think is important enough for me to listen to. It’s true some speakers were boring and the hosts had probably read the speeches ahead of time and decided I wouldn’t want to hear them.

I discovered today, though, by watching the live streaming, that there were three excellent speakers they decided not to show. There was a fourth who brought down the house in real time, but we only got to see the first couple of minutes on the networks. I had to go back and listen to the whole speech after live streaming for today was over.

I guess talk show hosts think we are watching their channels to see what they and their guests think, but I can’t be the only one who wants to actually hear the convention they are supposed to be covering. In my opinion, if they say they are covering the convention, the show should be mostly the convention – not the commentary. That could come later in the evening.

A political convention is not supposed to be all about the commentators and news anchors. It’s supposed to be about the participants and enable those who can’t attend to see what is really going on. I’m afraid I found myself yelling at the screen every time I got interested in what a speaker was saying, and the commentators decided what they had to say was more important and talked over the speaker.

Am I the only one this bothers?