ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, May 8, 1996 TAG: 9605080075
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: PHILADELPHIA
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
BUT A GROUP that has advocated that move wants the networks to commit to prime time, too.
All major television networks except ABC have now agreed to offer free time for presidential candidates to state their views before the Nov. 5 election. And ABC is expected to announce a plantoday.
The networks had rejected the idea of unfiltered free time for candidates, arguing that regular campaign coverage, plus the time made available on the morning and Sunday interview shows, offered candidates the opportunity to make their plans known.
But after being prodded this year, first by a public-interest coalition that includes Walter Cronkite, and then by Rupert Murdoch, the head of Fox Television, who announced in February that he would offer free time, the broadcast networks, as well as CNN gave the idea received renewed attention.
CBS announced Monday that it would make the time available within its newscasts, and NBC and CNN announced plans Tuesday.
NBC, like CBS, said the candidates would be given the time on its news programs, ranging from ``Today'' to the ``Nightly News'' to ``Dateline.''
CNN, like Fox, agreed to provide the time during the peak viewing hours, between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m.
Paul Taylor, the executive director of Free TV for Straight Talk Coalition, who along with Cronkite has been lobbying the networks to provide two to five minutes a night during prime time, said Tuesday they intended to continue pursuing that goal.
The offers are ``all very nice,'' said Taylor, former political reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Washington Post, ``but it's half a loaf. We have a lot of offers on the table now, which may even be more than the candidates can respond to. Let's now try to regularize these offers and put them into an efficient form that gives the healthiest discourse to the greatest number of Americans.
``I continue to believe that the way to do that is along the lines of what we proposed: A few minutes a night of prime time,'' when the largest audience is watching.
Cronkite, in an article Tuesday in USA Today, argued for prime time, saying ``we still need to stretch the envelope to try to reach the disengaged.''
Cronkite, Taylor and others argue that free time for candidates to seriously discuss issues will help reduce the effect of big money and corrosive negative advertising.
``Paid political advertising is not going to go away, and there will be attack advertising,'' Taylor said. ``But let's come forward with a competing way, with incentives that are in a healthier place.''
CBS, in a letter to Taylor signed by senior vice president Martin Franks, said the time would be provided ``during the closing days of the '96 campaign on our regularly scheduled news programs,'' with details to be worked out later.
In an interview Tuesday, Franks said, ``we've always been intrigued by the notion of trying to elevate the campaign a little bit. We just never bought the notion that the answer was sandwiching it into prime time. As we then looked at it, the folks at CBS News thought that it would be pretty good television.''
The NBC plan announced Tuesday contained something for all its newscasts. ``Nightly News'' will run excerpts, without editing, of the candidates' basic stump speeches, the ones they deliver, with minor changes, wherever they go. ``Dateline,'' the newsmagazine that's on four times a week, will invite the candidates to address issues chosen by a public survey. In addition, each candidate will be asked to appear on ``Today'' for an hour to answer questions from the anchors and the public. The candidates also will be asked to answer questions on NBC's cable network.
CNN said it would offer each major candidate five minutes a week, for four weeks, to discuss issues the network chooses. Each segment would be shown on ``Inside Politics'' at 4 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.
Fox has offered one hour on election eve to be divided among all the major candidates, and 10 one-minute segments for each candidate to address issues in the final few weeks of the campaign.
There were unconfirmed reports that ABC would offer the candidates one hour of prime time in the final week of the campaign.
The national Republican and Democratic party organizations have applauded the free-time concept in principle, although neither President Clinton nor Sen. Bob Dole have addressed it.
Ed Turner, executive vice president of newsgathering for CNN, said that while his network had always thought before that it provided adequate time to the candidates during regular programming, ``there was a change of thinking in the industry that this wasn't a bad thing.''
``I strongly favor this,'' Turner said, ``but it is most necessary on the local level to get more attention for the men and women running for the House of Representatives.''
LENGTH: Medium: 92 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICS PRESIDENTby CNB