CONVENTION'S PLANNERS FOCUS ON TV AUDIENCE.

Byline: Bob Dart Cox News Service

To nominate Bob Dole for president in San Diego, Republicans have planned an unconventional convention, aimed at transmitting an unfiltered GOP message to voters and changing the communication of American politics.

To keep prime-time TV viewers from clicking their channel changers, Republicans will replace traditional podium oratory with fast-paced political programming featuring what Haley Barbour, chairman of the Republican National Committee, calls ``real people telling their real stories'' from their hometowns.

Convention planners will also use a sophisticated, multimedia barrage to reach the majority of Americans who don't watch political conventions on TV at all.

``We will break with tradition to tell our story through shorter speeches, featuring more people, using technology to involve people from all over the country,'' Barbour said.

By the time Rep. Susan Molinari, R-N.Y., begins her keynote address Tuesday in the San Diego Convention Center, she already will have spent a long day getting out her message to the nation. Through three GOP-linked communications satellites, she will do dozens of interviews with local TV newscasters who didn't go to San Diego but are located in key campaign areas.

``People in targeted states, who may not be watching the speech that night, will get Susan Molinari's message'' on their local stations, explained Paul Manafort, Dole's convention planner. ``And maybe after seeing it on their 5 and 6 o'clock news, they'll want to watch the full speech that night.''

In addition, Molinari will walk and talk her way down the convention's Talk Radio Row - delivering a tailored, direct message to the listeners of 50 or so call-in programs.

And she will communicate from cyberspace. Linked through the Internet to scores of home pages of Republican groups and their supporters, Molinari will spend a couple of hours communicating with the occupants of computer chat rooms.

For the first time in his experience, Manafort said, the communications operation at a party convention is larger than the political organization.

``We're going to use modern communications during the day to hype our program, and if we don't increase viewership, we're still going to extend our direct unfiltered reach,'' he said.

The new approach will give convention managers more control over the message that millions of voters will receive from the Aug. 12-15 event. The need for such discipline was evident at the 1992 GOP convention when many moderates turned off conservative Patrick Buchanan's fiery rhetoric about a religious war for the nation's soul.

The changes, however, are also a frank admission that, with presidential nominees already selected during primaries, modern political conventions lack drama and usually make for boring TV programming.

``Television is a business,'' said William Greener, the corporate public-relations executive who is managing the Republican convention. ``If there was a lot of money to be made having people stand on a podium making extended remarks, you'd see it.''

There is no evidence, Greener said, that the American public changes its viewing preferences for two weeks every year and suddenly wants to watch a marathon of politicians making speeches.

Manafort said GOP research showed that convention viewership had remained fairly stable in recent election years but that it had become splintered, with networks losing and cable stations picking up shares of the market.

For the prime-time audience, the convention will essentially be a scripted television program. Rejecting the description ``political infomercial,'' Greener said the video convention will be ``a cross between PBS and commercial television.''

Except for Dole's acceptance, Molinari's keynote and a couple of other instances, no speech will be longer than 10 minutes. Convention planners are scrapping the tradition of having one politician introduce another politician who introduces yet another.

``Instead of long speeches, there will be short issue segments and a variety of means of presentation,'' Manafort said. ``There will be live remotes from around the country showing ordinary people talking about effects of Republican policies on their lives.''

Since most Americans don't usually watch the prime-time convention coverage, Manafort said the Republicans will use nontraditional media such as talk radio, satellite feeds to local stations and the Internet to get their message out throughout the day. But there is no effort to bypass traditional news media, he said.

``Actually, we're not going around. We're going right to. That's the whole idea,'' he said. ``In the past, many media outlets . . . were bypassed. We're expanding the interaction.''

CAPTION(S):

Photo