Word: gaveled
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Television's habit of cutting away at will from the podium began, with far more justification, in the days when conventions were a gaudy and contentious rite where delegates really debated and decided. Television boasted of the civic responsibility of its gavel-to-gavel coverage, but even then it was contrasting the shouting orator and the snoozing delegate or chasing politicians down hotel corridors, arguing that this was where the real news was being made. It was also where journalistic reputations were being made, which is why in its own interest each network lavished so much money on coverage...
...prominence accorded the networks, at the moment when the Democrats made history by nominating Geraldine Ferraro for Vice President, all three networks were airing sitcoms. Contending that the convention lacked news value because it offered little suspense or surprise, the networks dropped all pretense of covering "gavel to gavel." Instead, they aired highlights for little more than two hours a night. CBS did not even carry addresses by the nation's highest-ranking Democrat, House Speaker Tip O'Neill, or by Congressman Morris Udall, who controversially urged the party to reconcile itself with former President Jimmy Carter...
...Democrats were working feverishly to make sure they put on a ringing rather than a raucous show once the convention opens hi San Francisco next Monday night. For the first time in three decades they will not be assured gavel-to-gavel coverage on network TV. All three networks are abandoning their traditional formats for a mixture of live action and taped highlights in segments of varying length. On some nights, portions of the proceedings on one network may be competing against entertainment programming on another. Similar arrangements will be in effect for the Republican Convention in Dallas in August...
Strange Brew. The unofficial thirst quencher of the convention will be Anchor Steam beer, a locally produced suds that will be handed out gratis to delegates and visitors, gavel to gavel. Few takers are likely to mistake it for their steady brew. In a nation where the major beer brands are lager light and getting lighter, Anchor Steam turns out a product that is dark, dense and slightly bitter. It is the antithesis of what Brewer Fritz Maytag, a scion of the washing-machine family, calls "lawnmower beers." Some authorities, not all of them locals, call it the best beer...
...mistake, that. Last week in London, Christie's auctioned off the 71 drawings for $28.5 million, including a record-breaking $4.8 million for Raphael's study of a head and hand. No drawing had ever before sold for more than $1 million. No sooner had the gavel dropped than "the greatest picture ever painted," J.M.W. Turner's Seascape: Folkestone, was put on the block at Sotheby's. That modest assessment came from the previous owner, the late Kenneth Clark of Civilisation fame. Others apparently agreed: the painting was sold to an anonymous individual for $10 million...