NEW YORK — Television networks rapidly shifted focus and personnel away from the Republican National Convention to Gulf Coast communities in the path of Hurricane Gustav on Sunday, wondering how much of their political planning will be for naught.
Anchors Katie Couric, Charles Gibson, Brian Williams, Anderson Cooper and Shepard Smith were all going to the New Orleans area for the storm instead of being with Republicans in St. Paul, Minn.
Whether they will head back north at all depends on the strength of the storm at today’s expected landfall. President Bush and Vice President Cheney already have canceled plans to be at the convention, where they were to be featured today, and the GOP was considering other changes to its program.
“We’re going to go with the biggest story of the day tomorrow,” said Jay Wallace, a news vice president at Fox News Channel, “and right now, the biggest story of the day is the storm.”
Along with Smith, Fox was sending Geraldo Rivera and at least a dozen crews to the Gulf. Fox had been anticipating a big week in St. Paul; its ratings topped every broadcast and cable network at the 2004 GOP convention.
Sunday on the cable networks would have otherwise been dominated by political stories — as it was the day before the Democratic convention last week in Denver — but much of the political talk concerned the storm’s impact on Republicans.
Even in the few times politics came up, the cable news networks usually kept an angry orange satellite picture of Gustav in the corner. At one point when Karl Rove was discussing Republican vice presidential choice Sarah Palin on Fox News Channel, his picture was crowded into one-fourth of the screen.
