PressThink's Jay Rosen speculates Thursday evening about the concept that networks could make "exclusive" deals with the political parties to televise the National Conventions every four years.

My response: Why would they do such a thing - and who does it benefit, other than the "exclusive" network?

Rosen compares the situation with the conventions to the Academy Awards and the Olympics - backing it up by bringing up the "long transformation of the conventions into message festivals that are also entertainment events." Entertainment? Perhaps the "talking head" fests that go on pre/post actual speech coverage would be considered entertainment, but the rest of it certainly isn't. If it were "entertainment," why would ABC, CBS, NBC lessen their overall coverage due to "declining news value and interest?" Hell, the nets need "entertainment" in the worst way. But yes, I understand - they feel that just covering speeches, etc., doesn't gain them any share from the cable/satellite news stations that have tons of coverage all day long, talk shows surrounding it, etc.

But placing FOX with the Republicans and CNN with the Democrats is on one hand kind of funny, and another hand kind of unfortunate. For one, you'll have much more accusation of bias in the coverage of the events. People will be claiming "home" coverage left and right, as the "between speech" commentary would only be coming from one station. What's that you say? That the other networks not broadcasting the whole convention could have their talkers there too? Well of course they could. But let's be honest. If you're stacking your coverage on one station, do you REALLY think people are going to flip to Channel X for the commentary and then flip back in order to watch the actual coverage? That's like if Comedy Central ran a show at the same time as the Academy Awards where some folks sat there and waited for awards, and then comedians sat there and ranked on what people were wearing, etc. - but only between award presentations. Ain't gonna happen. CNN may have "led" the ratings for the convention as a whole, but I can't see people sitting on their network the whole time and liking it.

"Ratings would be far higher for a single network." Does that mean if you added up all the shares of the current nets and compared them to what one network would pull in? I'm not so sure about that. As for "ratings," yeah, that works for the Olympics, too. I mean, it's not like there are complaints about how NBC covers the Games every other year, right? The ratings are high in a self-fulfilling prophecy kind of way, and that's all - no merit involved. Wouldn't you rather choose to watch the network that you believe does the best job?

So how would this work, anyway - do the networks "bid" to get the event? Do they pay for it? How do they decide who gets to "win?" Bias lawsuit in a box, if you ask me. What's to stop the network who owns the broadcast rights from stopping bloggers, for instance, from streaming their own video camera of the event over the Internet from the convention floor? It's "televised," isn't it?

Rosen continues to go against the "right to televise" comments that would be expected, still comparing to entertainment events. The Super Bowl and aforementioned Academy Awards are fun. They aren't politically charged (you know what I mean) and important to our overall existence as a nation. If the Super Bowl didn't happen next season, would the world end? (Well, maybe.) If we didn't elect a president this year, would people start flipping out? You bet.

Let's make this go wider, I say. Big hurricane making its way to Florida this week. I kind of like Miami's local NBC affiliate the best, so the other networks can't get footage of press conferences or visits by officials to the area. I'm also announcing that, since they were the first organization to do this properly, WeatherBug has official online rights to publish firsthand data to readers. Sure, other people can write about it later, but WeatherBug gets to do it first.

"Turn to Fox News for Exclusive Coverage of the Republican National Convention." Now doesn't that make more sense?

No.