[OFFICIAL] Republican National Convention 2020 thread

equal time.

Trump Youth Taunter of Native American Elder will speak at the convention:

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/...as-sandmann-to-speak-at-republican-convention

 

here's the home page

https://www.2020gopconvention.com/

with a very nice introductory letter from Marcia Lee Kelly:

Marcia Lee Kelly
President and CEO
2020 Republican National Convention





Dear Friends,

This resource will provide you with the latest news and information about the 2020 Republican National Convention.

Since taking on my role as President and CEO, I have been privileged to lead a team of experienced professionals who understand and take seriously our role to make history as delegates formally re-nominate the President and Vice President of the United States.

The Trump Administration has led us through great challenges and now is ushering in the Great American Comeback. Our country needs President Trump’s leadership for four more years, and the road back to the White House starts with the 2020 Republican National Convention.

I can’t wait to tell you more about what we have in store. For now, thank you for visiting this website and being part of this history-in-the-making. Please continue to check back for updates.

​

 

hat tip to @Carl Herrera

 

here's the schedule so far. Monday the 24th looks amazing.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/16/rnc-2020-schedule-of-events-and-speakers-390977

2020 Republican National Convention: Schedule of events and speakers

Follow POLITICO's coverage of the 2020 Republican National Convention.



Donald Trump prepares to formally accept his party's nomination on the fourth day of the Republican National Convention on July 21, 2016, at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. | John Moore/Getty Images

By POLITICO STAFF

08/16/2020 10:25 AM EDT

All times listed below reflect Eastern Daylight Time. More details from the Republican National Committee to follow. Schedule subject to change.

Monday, Aug. 24
Schedule TBA

Tuesday, Aug. 25
9 A.M.
Plug in with Playbook

Playbook co-authors Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer take viewers inside the re-imagined Republican National Convention less than 100 days from Election Day and kick off the morning interviewing a Republican insider. Plus: A look at the electoral landscape in Arizona and analysis into down-ballot races and general election polling. Watch live at politico.com/rnc and catch up on past Playbook events.

8:30 P.M.
Four Square
Four Square host and video Journalist Eugene Daniels pregames the RNC speeches and breaks down the day’s relevant political developments along with Chief Political Correspondent Tim Alberta, Chief Washington Correspondent Ryan Lizza and National Political Reporter Laura Barrón-López. Watch live at politico.com/rnc and catch up on past Four Square events.


Wednesday, Aug. 26
9 A.M.
Plug in with Playbook
Playbook co-authors Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer sit down for a virtual interview with Executive Director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee Kevin McLaughlin. Plus: A look at the electoral landscape in Florida and a dive into the reelection campaign of President Donald Trump. Watch live at politico.com/rnc and catch up on past Playbook events.

8:30 P.M.
Four Square
Four Square host and video journalist Eugene Daniels pregames the RNC speeches and breaks down the day’s relevant political developments along with Chief Political Correspondent Tim Alberta, Chief Washington Correspondent Ryan Lizza and National Political Reporter Laura Barrón-López. Watch live at politico.com/rnc and catch up on past Four Square events.

Thursday, Aug. 27
9 A.M.
Plug in with Playbook
Playbook co-authors Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer close out their coverage of the RNC with an interview from a Republican insider. Plus: A look at the electoral landscape in North Carolina and analysis of digital campaigning and technology. Watch live at politico.com/rnc and catch up on past Playbook events.

1 P.M.
Powering America's Economic Recovery
Presented by Bank of America

As the political parties formalize their nominees and Americans get ready to vote for their next president, the economy will be a driving factor in determining the 2020 election outcome. Chief Economic Correspondent Ben White hosts a deep-dive virtual conversation exploring how the incoming administration, Democratic or Republican, will approach economic and labor policies after November. Register here.

8:30 P.M.
Four Square
Four Square host and video journalist Eugene Daniels pregames the RNC speeches and breaks down the day’s relevant political developments along with Chief Political Correspondent Tim Alberta, Chief Washington Correspondent Ryan Lizza and National Political Reporter Laura Barrón-López. Watch live at politico.com/rnc and catch up on past Four Square events.
​

 

"The Democrats jumped off a ratings cliff. The GOP doesn’t have to follow them":

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/08/18/democrats-jumped-off-ratings-cliff-gop-doesnt-have-follow-them/

The Democrats jumped off a ratings cliff. The GOP doesn’t have to follow them.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer speaks during the first night of the Democratic National Convention. (Democratic National Convention Handout/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Opinion by
Hugh Hewitt
Contributing columnist
August 18, 2020 at 3:59 p.m. EDT


If speeches made for great or even good television, there would be a channel devoted to them. “The Speech Channel” would be must-watch TV, the vital part of basic cable or a satellite bundle of offerings.

Wait. There is already a speech channel. There are three, in fact. They are called C-SPAN 1, C-SPAN 2 and C-SPAN 3. And the only story about ratings I could find for C-SPAN as a whole pegged its viewership at about 20,000 households at any given time. That’s low. That is even lower than my canceled MSNBC show, which hovered around 70,000 to 80,000 total viewers on Saturday mornings at 8:30 until MSNBC and I agreed to end the horrific experiment in competing against cartoons.

It’s tough to beat Saturday morning at 8:30 when the lead-in is an infomercial.

So I know a little about ratings. My radio show has been going since July 2000. The decade that I co-hosted a public affairs show for then-Los Angeles PBS affiliate KCET broke no records, either: We would break out the champagne if we got so much as a “1 share,” which as audiences go isn’t big and didn’t happen often. C-SPAN 1, for perspective’s sake, is somewhere between .01 and .02. Even PBS thrashes “The Speech Channel.”

The Democratic Convention’s first night no doubt had the loyalists tune in and leave the box on, but the traditional conventions draw their miserable ratings for the funny hats the Texas delegates wear, for the crazies outside the hall and for the panel discussions broadcasting from bars and coffee shops. Rarely do the networks actually cover the speeches, and even when they do, they cut away frequently to other things. It’s the energy of the real conventions that made them at all watchable. That’s all gone now, and so too are the small audiences the quadrennial celebrations drew.

It was, in a word, unwatchable. Now, I love C-SPAN. Brian Lamb rightly received the Medal of Freedom for founding it, and it’s a huge public service that ought to be emulated in every country. We’d all benefit if once a week every other network went dark and C-SPAN aired a “Best of Congress” special for an hour. But that’s not happening. C-SPAN aficionados love it for its relentless thoroughness (and if you stay in D.C. long enough, you can watch yourself age in the C-SPAN archives). It is a unique service, and that is its draw.

Still, in general, television audiences don’t watch speeches. So Republicans should learn from the Democrats’ fiasco and switch it up quickly for their convention next week. The best choice is 20 hours of President Trump interviews with 20 different interlocutors. He’s still the best interview in America.

Even he might think that’s over the top, however, so perhaps 15 minutes of every hour could go to an interview with, say, Vice President Pence, or Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark) or Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-SC). I think it is worth noting that Cotton and Graham are, respectively, the most serious and most humorous of the Republican senators.

The key is to get good interviewers and to edit well. This could turn the unwatchable march through the teleprompters into something at least as interesting as PBS reruns.

Trump knows TV. That’s why he won the 2016 debates — all of them. His inner programmer knows he doesn’t need to share the stage. Sure, put the candidates in key Senate races in prime time for 15 minutes, but just because the Democrats jumped off a ratings cliff doesn’t mean the GOP has to follow them.

Get going, RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel. Talk to your professionals about who can do the sit-downs. Offer the networks their shots. Then get some editors and producers, and produce a watchable show. We can’t have the Texas delegation this year, but the Republicans shouldn’t give up production values just because the Democrats did.

​

 

"TV networks are reportedly afraid of giving the RNC too much airtime, so they cut the DNC's time short too":

https://theweek.com/speedreads/9320...d-giving-rnc-much-airtime-cut-dncs-time-short

 

don't get your hopes up

https://thefederalist.com/2020/08/19/the-republican-national-convention-needs-to-rock/

The Republican National Convention Needs To Rock

AUGUST 19, 2020 By David Marcus

It’s kind of amazing. The Democratic Party has at its disposal pretty much all of the talent in Hollywood and yet their boring infomercial of a national convention makes watching tomatoes turn red look like the Super Bowl. Calling it boring is an insult to boring people who can at least be calm and soothing. The DNC is just flat out unwatchable. I’ve been wondering why, and I think I figured it out.

Among the myriad jobs I had in my 20 years doing theater, one of my favorites was being a stage manager. It’s a great job. I wrote a joke about it once. How many stage managers does it take to screw in a light bulb? One. Said with deadly seriousness. It is the stage manager who makes everything happen when it is supposed to happen. A live event is fraught with potential mishaps. The stage manager gives everyone five and makes sure the lights come up. The problem with the DNC? They made it a movie when a convention needs to be a theater production.

So here is a little free advice for the Republicans. First of all, in the name of all that is good and holy, there needs to be some kind of audience. I don’t care if it’s 10 people sitting in a Dairy Queen parking lot, we need to see actual people reacting to speeches and nominations in real time. I get it, Democrats are dedicated to the idea that we all have to live in hermetically sealed households with masks on until Trump is defeated. The GOP must send the opposite message.

Feature the fan base. Elections are about the American people more than they are about candidates. Speeches shot two weeks ago in some Falls Church, Virginia studio won’t cut it. It feels old, it feels prepackaged, it feels like turning the channel. Part of what people love about a live performance is that things can go wrong. An actor can go up on their lines, a gun (that’s what we call lights) can flash out, an audience member’s cell phone can go off at some critical moment. That is the titillating nature of live entertainment.

Just because there can’t be big crowds and balloon drops, although frankly at this point there probably should be, doesn’t mean the Republican convention can’t pop. Do live Q and A’s with voters, feature socially distanced watch parties, bring us in. We are a body politic, not a nation of pod people who order from Amazon and are careful not to touch our faces. We need a little action, man.

We also need some joy. The Democrats’ convention message thus far has pretty much been America sucks, but it will suck slightly less if Joe Biden is elected president. That should not be hard to top. Let us be proud of our country, show us a way forward that gives a glimpse of all of us in each other’s arms again. Give us music, dancing, empty champagne bottles, and black bow ties undone hanging from bright white collars.

The Democrats’ convention, I’d call it a sad spectacle except it isn’t a spectacle at all, it is a bet they are making. The bet is that we are all terrified to go outside, so we are meant to take comfort in sleepy old Joe Biden telling us everything will be OK someday. Not only should Republicans take this bet, they should double down on the courage of the American people and their desire to let down their hair down, pandemic or not. Donald Trump is a showman, he’s proved that time and again, and if he is to serve a second term in the White House he needs to put on a show.

More than anything else, the Republicans must make this election that feels like no other feel more like all the others. We need fun surprises; we need smiles and people all dressed up with silly hats. What we don’t need is John Kasich standing in an empty field lecturing us about how pure he is. Have Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham compete in a drinking contest, have Nikki Haley lead the country in a giant game of Pictionary. Something. Anything.

Woody Allen once said of audiences, “these people’s lives are straight lines, they’re waiting for a punch line.” And that’s right. The Democrats’ convention has been the bat mitzvah of the niece you don’t like with a cash bar and a bland chicken dinner. The GOP can do better; it would actually be hard not to better. So let’s do this. The country is ready for some fun.



​

 

why not?

 

bye