Intro for August 27, 2024

Dear Gossips, 

In my TV colleagues group chat last Thursday, the final night of the Democratic National Convention, most of the messages my friends and I were sending back and forth were about whether or not Beyoncé would show up. 

As we saw, in the end, what showed up was our asses, again. After the Queen, though, the second most common refrain in the chat was that they had better get the Candidate into prime time. Up to that point, on the three previous nights of the DNC, they ran long, they were so heavy on Monday that President Joe Biden only started his remarks around 1130pm ET and finished almost an hour later, well after midnight. 

For the DNC then, if there was one night to bring the show to time, it was Thursday, when Vice President Kamala Harris would formally accept her party’s nomination for president. She needed to reach the biggest audience possible to make a case for their votes. And they succeeded – VP Harris was the prime time event, the final ratings are now in: her acceptance speech was watched 28.9 million viewers. 

Over all four nights, the DNC averaged 21.8 million viewers and many, many millions of impressions across social media, which was also part of the strategy for the production team. That number, by the way, is over a million more than the Oscars. And I’m comparing them because the DNC was a show, a television show. It was produced as a television show, a four-part limited series, by a team that has worked on entertainment events like the Tony Awards, the Golden Globes, the Emmys, and yes, the Oscars. 

The Show Your Work behind that, then, is sexy. And worth studying. New York Magazine delivered the Show Your Work: DNC Edition this past weekend and it’s not just porn for those of who work in television but for anyone interested in event planning and coordination – especially THIS event. Because remember, they thought they were making a different show just a month ago! Imagine making a whole new show with a new main character in just four weeks! The entire rundown had to change, the theme had to change, almost all of it had to change!

And, by their standards, and we’re talking television production standards and not political standards, they pulled it off, a smash hit. We’ll find out in November if there’s a similar political outcome. For now, though, and for the purposes of this post, this is about live television professionals doing their jobs – and amplifying the value of the artform. This is a skillset that is increasingly being undervalued by the industry and the executives who run the business. Artificial Intelligence wouldn’t be able to do this work. Artificial Intelligence would not have been able to imagine that wonderful roll call, a “traditional formality” that was thoroughly modernised on night two of the convention. The inspiration for what we saw at the DNC 2024 roll call came from… the NBA. Read the piece to learn how it came together. Another example that A.I. could never. 

Yours in gossip, 

Lainey