ven though the Republican National Convention has been tailored for television, viewers are so unimpressed that they tuned out by the millions Monday night.
To be sure, a certain dropoff was inevitable this year because one of the three leading broadcast networks, NBC, chose not to carry the first night of the GOP convention.
But this was supposed to be the year when the all-news cable networks - CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC - stepped into the broadcast breach and played the convention-coverage role the old Big Three - NBC, ABC, and CBS - are no longer willing to play. Yet the trio of cable channels drew a combined audience Monday that was less than half the 6 million viewers NBC did in 1996.
Overall, the prime-time audience in 1996 for ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and CNN was around 20 million viewers. On Monday, the combined audience in prime-time was just over 16 million for the networks that aired any coverage at all: ABC (which devoted just an hour), CBS (whose coverage was limited to a half-hour portion of its newsmagazine), PBS, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC.
In Boston, meanwhile, viewers voted thunderously with their clickers: When ''Monday Night Football'' ended on WCVB-TV (Channel 5) and ABC's convention coverage began, two-thirds of the audience, or 200,000 households, either changed the channel or turned off their TVs.
Commentators have noted the absence of drama at the Republican convention, with the nominee and his running mate already known and intraparty squabbling kept under wraps. Even the much-anticipated speeches Monday night by retired General Colin Powell and Laura Bush, wife of GOP candidate George W. Bush, couldn't pull in viewers.
Moreover, to judge by the ratings reported by the networks for Monday night, viewers have not yet made the transition from broadcast to cable for the quadrennial display of political pageantry.
In 1996, the combined audience for ABC, CBS, and NBC on the first night of the GOP convention was just under 17 million viewers. On Monday, ABC was the only broadcast network to devote a full hour to coverage, drawing 5.9 million viewers for the speeches by Powell and Mrs. Bush that began at 10 p.m. That was a slight increase for ABC from 1996, even though the network's ratings were actually down a bit (the TV audience on which ratings are based is larger than it was four years ago).
CBS limited its convention coverage Monday to a portion of its newsmagazine ''48 Hours'': The program drew 6.3 million viewers, an increase from four years ago. But, in the head-to-head competition at 10 p.m., the decisive victor was NBC with a rerun of a drama called ''Third Watch,'' which pulled in 10 million viewers.
Locally, Boston-area viewers proved far more interested in the Patriots-49ers matchup. More than 331,000 households were tuned in to Channel 5 for the last 15 minutes of the football broadcast, even though the Patriots had the game well in hand. But when convention coverage began at 10 p.m., Channel 5's audience dropped to barely 130,000 households.
