ASHINGTON - Dot-com skyboxes, a three-day ''rolling'' roll call, and sandwiching retired General Colin Powell's speech between the first and second half of a New England Patriots preseason game on ABC-TV are the shiniest weapons in the Republican Party's war against a shrinking audience for its national convention next month in Philadelphia.
It's a battle: Both parties are desperate to showcase their presidential and vice presidential nominees, set the themes for what is shaping up as a tight race this fall, and avoid floor debates that could produce real drama. Yet because the four-day political conventions don't generate news or high ratings, the Big Three networks have vowed to pare down coverage to a few prime-time hours.
So innovation is on the way for one of the most time-honored rituals in American politics.
The most important, officials of both parties say, will be the big-time presence of the Internet as both an information source and interactive tool when the GOP meets July 31 to Aug. 3, and the Democrats hold their convention in Los Angeles Aug. 14-17.
Look to the rafters of the big arenas and next to the usual network skyboxes there will be ''AOL.com'' and ''Pseudopolitics.com.'' Users can go to those Web sites and click on to cameras scanning the convention floors 24 hours a day, chat with a delegate, listen to a speech at the podium, or participate in a poll.
''Instead of Dan or Peter or Tom telling you what's happening, you will feel like you're experiencing the convention yourself,'' said David Bohrman, Pseudopolitics' chief executive.
Outside the halls, in the press's workspace, some 55 Internet news outlets will occupy ''Internet Alley'' in Philadelphia and 150 will set up shop on ''Internet Avenue'' in Los Angeles. Their presence will represent the parties' first major accommodation to convention coverage by the new medium, and according to GOP spokesman Tim Fitzpatrick, it is fitting that this is happening first in Philadelphia, where convention television debuted in 1948.
''The last time we were here was the first time a convention was shown to a television audience,'' Fitzpatrick said. ''This time we are back with the Internet in our quiver, and it's going to have as revolutionary an impact as TV did 50 years ago.''
Both parties will have their own convention Web sites, too, (www.gopconvention.com and www.dems2000.com) but it is still unclear whether the opportunity to remotely participate as a ''dot-com delegate'' will lure Americans on summer vacation to events they generally find boring. But to the degree an exploding number of cable television networks and Internet news sites provide gavel-to-gavel convention coverage and fill hour after hour with political gab, the parties and their nominees at least have a fighting chance to be heard.
''The vast expansion of media outlets is a bonanza for them,'' said Zachary Karabell, author of ''The Last Campaign: How Harry Truman Won the 1948 Election.'' ''It's a great deal that the parties can take their message to the voter with impunity. Whether it's a great deal for the public is another question.''
In a 1998 study for Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, Karabell found that over-the-air networks broadcasted about 60 hours of each party convention in 1952, and 80 percent of US households, or about 65 million viewers, tuned in for 10 to 13 hours. By 1996, live network coverage averaged eight hours, and only 10 percent of households watched any of it.
The tension between television and the political parties isn't new. For two decades over-the-air networks have complained that presidential primaries have sucked suspense out of the nominating conventions, and by trying to make them dissent-free, the parties have turned them into dull, scripted affairs. Irked by what they think is the networks' obsession with ratings and profits, the parties are scrambling this summer to add pizazz to their shows and build audiences.
The Republicans, for example, are considering a ''rolling roll call'' that would extend over three nights the traditional but often tedious one-night call of the states (''The great state of Massachusetts ... casts its 37 votes for ...''). It would add pace to the program, GOP planners hope, plus guarantee that Texas Governor George W. Bush triumphantly goes over the top as the party's presidential nominee in prime time on Wednesday, Aug. 2.
Republicans are also counting on star power to get the networks' attention. Arizona Senator John McCain, Bush's chief opponent in the primaries, is penciled in for a prime-time speech on Tuesday, Aug. 1. That's the same night Presidents Bush and Ford and former first lady Nancy Reagan are to appear. The vice presidential nominee, expected to be named well before the convention, would speak Wednesday night.
Laura Bush, wife of the presumptive nominee, is expected to address the convention Monday night, as is Colin Powell. Since convention managers learned ABC was planning to broadcast a pre-season game between the Patriots and San Francisco 49ers instead, they have been seriously studying how to schedule the general's speech for halftime and get ABC to cut away from sports programming.
''My guess is, there is a kind of internal struggle in the party between turning the convention into an appealing television program and dealing with the substance of what the convention is all about,'' said Lester M. Crystal, executive producer of PBS's ''NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,'' which will broadcast at least three hours of convention coverage on each of eight nights. ''They are trying to dress it up as much as possible, and there is a distinct entertainment quotient to it.''
Andrew Card, a former member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives and former transportation secretary under President Bush, who is running the GOP convention, insists that television is ''not going to drive our programming.'' Still, he acknowledges, the party is looking for ''creative'' ways to focus the nation's attention on the GOP nominee for four days before, during, and after the convention, including nightly appearances by Bush in the convention hall, either by video or in person.
''If the Republicans are smart, they will give up large gobs of time to the networks for exclusive interviews with Bush and his family,'' said Richard Bond, a former GOP chairman, who calls Bush ''a very seductive personality.'' ''It gets you around ... TV correspondents going out on the floor to find the angry delegate with the funny hat and fetus in a jar - a convention planner's worst nightmare.''
Indeed, Bush has already put out the word that he wants a positive, upbeat convention, including no criticism of President Clinton or Vice President Al Gore, the presumptive Democratic nominee.
The Democratic convention will stress the positive, too, but so far its planners have been less forthcoming about their strategies for attracting attention to a candidate most Americans already know well and a party that has held the White House for eight years.
''We expect the convention will focus on Vice President Gore's biography and on his agenda for continuing the country's prosperity and progress,'' said Peter Ragone, a Democratic convention spokesman, adding that most of the program decisions have not yet been made.
Terry McAuliffe, the Democrats' convention manager, recently disclosed that both former enator Bill Bradley, who opposed Gore in the primaries, and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is a Senate candidate in New York, will give prime-time speeches. President Clinton's full role is still undecided; typically, presidents pass the torch and step out of the spotlight but McAuliffe said the president is set to address the convention Monday, Aug. 14.
