This unconventional convention show is the latest look in campaign coverage. Eight years ago Bill Clinton took to MTV in an attempt to reach young voters. At last week’s GOP convention in Philadelphia, politicians flocked to the Net. At least 35 online sites, large and small, staked out territory in the convention’s Internet Alley. Sam Donaldson hosted nightly Webcasts from the ABCNews.com booth. In the convention hall, upstart Pseudo shelled out $20,000 for a prestigious skybox next to AOL and the network giants. Its site, Pseudopolitics.com, combined grainy 360-degree views from five digital cameras with Web chats and non-stop convention talk. So-called EJs–electronic deejays such as Judgecal, the Billy Idol look-alike in a bowling shirt and black leather pants–moderated the chat at flat-screen monitors.
The idea was to let Pseudo viewers watch their own director’s cut of the convention-floor show. Site visitors could check out the latest speech from the podium, click to see how the Texas delegation was reacting, then switch back up to the gabfest in the box. “We’re really deconstructing television,” says CEO David Bohrman. Politicians from Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge to civil-rights leader Al Sharpton played along. Media types from across the country also buzzed in and out of the skybox. George magazine, Salon.com and The New York Observer all teamed with Pseudo to produce convention shows. “We are the party room,” said Judgecal. “You look at AOL, it’s dead. You look at CNN, it’s dead.”
Pseudo can’t, or won’t, say just how many people outside the convention hall were tuning in. But senior VP Jeanne Meyer says the first day’s programming drew more viewers than three days of Mars Polar Lander coverage, the site’s previous big draw. “Hopefully, we can say that we’ve gotten a cable-sized audience,” Meyer says.
That sounds like history in the making. Just in case it was, Smithsonian curators grabbed one of Pseudo’s 360-degree cameras off the top of the Texas delegation’s standard; it will join a collection that includes FDR’s fireside-chat microphone. As an innovation, Pseudo’s convention cam “could be the Wright [brothers’] flier, it could be the Tucker [car],” says the Smithsonian’s W. Larry Bird Jr. Either way, expect to see many more of the devices hovering over the 2004 conventions.
