Jim Lehrer of PBS' "The NewsHour" claims to be mystified as to why the broadcast networks would provide mere token primetime coverage of this week's Republican National Convention in New York (much as it had of last month's Democratic confab), leaving public TV as the only free over-the-air network providing comprehensive attention.

Well, it's like this, Jim: Political confabs just don't deliver the numbers. This may be something of a foreign concept to a guy who hasn't needed to depend on ratings for his survival in the big bad world of television news, but it's a fact nonetheless.

The conventions have been reduced to the level of poorly performing reality shows that get renewed every four years in spite of themselves. If ABC, NBC and CBS had anything to say about it, they would no doubt be canceled altogether. The numbers are paltry, the demographics ancient, the schedule impact nonexistent.

There once was a time, of course, when the networks considered it their sacred duty to ignore the audience levels and go gavel-to-gavel with the conventions as a public service. It seems such a quaint, antiquated notion today to take a financial hit simply because it's the right thing to do. Those days are long gone.

But would it really be the right thing after all? Oh sure, the conventions are intrinsic to the process of choosing our next president. But staged and propaganda-laden pep rallies that they are -- and as blanketed by the cable news nets as they've become -- there really does seem little point in being there simply for the sake of being there. And of course we wouldn't want to have to preempt some very special episodes of "Fear Factor," "Last Comic Standing," "Big Brother" and "The Amazing Race," now would we?

If there is violence or massive protesting to be covered, all bets are off and the gathering becomes an actual, honest-to-goodness news event. In the absence of that, this week's convention (like the Democrats' gathering last month) is everything TV audiences have been trained to abhor: a slow-moving infomercial, packed to the gills with partisan pontificating and strident speechifying. To the MTV generation, this is known as electronic poison.

If I was an undecided voter who wound up tuning in to these shrill, one-note conventions, I imagine I would become "decided" rather quickly -- making the decision to vote for no one.

How ironic is it that the biggest controversy to emerge from the Democratic assemblage was the purported speeding up of his keynote speech by Sen. John Kerry so as to get in under the 11 o'clock network cutoff time in the East? Even when the story is how little heed the broadcasters are paying the event, they wind up taking center stage, anyway.

Had Kerry's handlers been smart, they would have counseled their man to take a different, far more proactive approach. They should have advised the candidate to say the following near the opening of his speech: "I want to apologize in advance to the networks for possibly going over my allotted time here. But I ask them to bear with me and stick around until the end, because what I have to say is important for every American to hear and can't be rushed."

This would have been a win-win situation for Kerry. He would've looked strong for standing up to the broadcast media and calling the shots. If they cut him off before he was done, then TV would've looked bad.

This is what President Bush should do early on in his speech Thursday: Tell the networks not to shortchange him.

Broadcasters wouldn't dare oppose a sitting president who makes such a direct request. If they did, then we would conclusively know just how far news has fallen from the broadcast networks' radar screen.