Could conventions get shorter?

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — or shorter -- will become the standard for 2016 and beyond.

Conventions are expensive to put on -- the cost of the Democratic gathering was $52 million -- and their outcomes are preordained.

The broadcast TV networks, which the parties have relied on to give their prime-time speakers a large national audience, have steadily trimmed their coverage. A post-convention lift in the polls, or "bounce," is far from a given.

Democrats shortened their proceedings from four days in favor of a three-day convention preceded by an outdoor festival on Labor Day. Republicans have held two three-day conventions, as both this year's gathering and the 2008 edition were shortened by hurricanes.

The traditional four-day convention "is the equivalent of a political appendix," says Democratic consultant Chris Lehane, who served as spokesman for Al Gore's 2000 campaign. "For us, it's a great three days, it's fun ? but it ultimately was originally created for a specific function that no longer exists."

Democratic convention chairman Antonio Villaraigosa says conventions could be even shorter.

"I don't think a convention needs to be four days long. I don't know if it needs to be three," said Villaraigosa, mayor of Los Angeles.

Some of the calculation depends on how much free airtime the parties can get for their investment in the convention, Villaraigosa said. This year, broadcast networks said they would air only three nights of proceedings, and NBC showed the NFL's opening game Wednesday night.

"That may very well have an impact on these conventions, because part of what you want to have here is to be able to publicly frame the campaign and launch it. And if at some point it's not going to be covered, it's going to be difficult to do that."

At their convention in Tampa, Republicans formed a commission to study the idea of revamped conventions, including holding events in multiple cities instead of a single host city.

Conventions are "very expensive propositions," House Speaker John Boehner said in Tampa. "Given as much news as people get today and the way they get their news, I'm not sure having a four-day convention in the future makes a lot of sense," he said at a Christian Science Monitor event last week.

Delegates here enjoyed the convention too much to want to abandon it. "I can meet people I met in '04 and '08 and reconnect and re-energize," said Bill Dooling, 69, a Massachusetts delegate and retired school teacher.

"Look at what Bill Clinton did (Wednesday) night. That's why you don't have a one-day convention," said Walt Spader, an alternate from Connecticut and chairman of the North Haven, Conn., Democratic Party in line for an Obama-Biden photo booth outside the convention hall. "We can't go back to the Lincoln-Douglas debates. No one's going to listen to that for six hours. But this is the only opportunity for the parties to really talk about policy, to talk about their vision."

The Labor Day festival gave delegates the opportunity to socialize before getting down to business, says Rick Palacio, chair of the Colorado Democrats. "Now that they have the partying out of the way, now they have an opportunity to focus on all of our guest speakers and business at hand. It concentrates the mind.

"Three days seems to be just about a perfect amount of time," says Palacio, whose first convention was the Democrats' four-day gathering in Denver in 2008. Then, he wasn't head of the Democratic Party in a hotly contested swing state.

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