Fading conventions.

Byline: The Register-Guard

More than a few old-schoolers remember with rhapsodic fondness the golden era of network TV coverage of Democratic and Republican political conventions.

Starting in the early 1950s, the networks offered nightly wall-to-wall coverage of the conventions - a quadrennial staple that featured journalistic legends such as Chet Huntley, David Brinkley and Walter Cronkite holding forth from glass booths high above arena floors.

The dramas were both frequent and memorable. From the 1952 Democratic convention when Adlai Stevenson won the nomination on the third ballot to the 1968 Democratic horror show in Chicago that was marked by fierce and, outside the convention hall, bloody, confrontations over civil rights and the Vietnam War, full-bore convention coverage kept viewers mesmerized across the nation.

Times have changed.

This year, the three major networks will limit their prime-time coverage of the national political conventions to one hour a night. That's a grand total of three hours each for next week's Democratic National Convention in Boston and the Republican gathering Aug. 30-Sept. 2 in New York City.

The networks have beat a steady retreat in recent years from the gavel-to-gavel coverage. The main reason is that political conventions have become little more than scripted coronation ceremonies. Both parties now do everything possible to prevent the spontaneity that once made political conventions so fascinating and, from a network's perspective, newsworthy.

Another reason is that conventions have become part of a political process that has grown so lengthy and, well, so stultifying that many Americans tune them out. Consider that the current campaign has been churning along for nearly two years. After the GOP convention wraps up in September, there will be another mind-numbing two months left before the election - an election in which polls indicate that the vast majority of voters already have made up their minds,

Political junkies who crave more convention coverage needn't despair. In this high tech age of hyper-communication, there are plenty of alternatives to the major networks, starting with PBS, which plans to cover both the Republican and Democratic conventions for three hours a night. C-Span, CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC all plan extensive coverage, and truly determined masochists can find several gavel-to-gavel Webcasts, as well.

So why should anyone bother to watch the conventions if they're such an inconsequential snore? One reason is that they're a national ritual, and rituals, even scripted and predictable ones, can help remind us of who we are and of our - to borrow a word much in vogue these days - values.

Another reason is that politics is still politics, and there will hopefully be a few flashes of spontaneity, revealing glimpses into the candidates and their parties. Who knows? Maybe someone will actually have something nasty to say about a platform, or raise a ruckus over delegate credentials - the kind of plot twists that used to make conventions better TV than any reality show the majors could ever dream up.