The Republican National Convention was to be held at Charlotte, N.C.’s Spectrum Center before its marquee events were moved to Jacksonville, Fla.
Photo: David T. Foster Iii/Zuma PressTwo years ago, CNN staffers descended on Charlotte, N.C., to start planning coverage of the 2020 Republican convention, scouting hotels and broadcast sites and even picking out a local watering hole where the network would host political power players.
These days, the cable-news network’s executives are working with rivals in an effort to reduce the number of employees it sends to both parties’ conventions, as the coronavirus pandemic has lowered their prominence and created safety risks for attendees and journalists.
Rashida Jones, senior vice president of MSNBC and NBC News, said she is having regular calls with leaders at CNN and Fox News to coordinate “pool” coverage, enabling the networks to use one video feed and reduce the number of journalists in potentially infectious areas. Pool cameras have long been a mainstay of election coverage, but coordination with other networks has become increasingly important because of the pandemic, she said.
As the U.S. grapples with record numbers of coronavirus infections, this year’s Democratic and Republican conventions are bound to be very different from the traditional, made-for-TV rites featuring crowds waving signs amid falling balloons and reams of crepe paper.
The Democratic convention will be held in Milwaukee, where former Vice President Joe Biden is expected to travel to accept his party’s presidential nomination. But organizers have told state delegations they shouldn’t plan to attend in person and should instead conduct official convention business remotely—including casting their nominating votes.
Republican National Convention, meanwhile, moved its marquee events to Jacksonville, Fla., after President Trump battled with North Carolina’s Democratic governor over social-distancing precautions that could have limited crowd size. Some events will still be held in Charlotte, including nominating the party’s candidates for president and vice president—with a limited number of delegates. Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has so far resisted calls to shift course on reopening or to require face masks to be worn in public statewide as infections there soar, taxing hospitals and forcing some businesses to shut down again.
“It’s not at all clear that the events in Milwaukee and Jacksonville are going to be anything like a normal convention,” said Sam Feist, CNN’s Washington bureau chief. “That will affect our coverage.”
Coverage of the 2020 election cycle has been disrupted beyond the conventions. Correspondents from print, TV and radio outlets—who during typical election years crisscross the nation as they follow candidates barnstorming gymnasiums and fish-fry events in battleground states—have increasingly been forced to scrutinize presidential hopefuls remotely. Election coverage must now vie for TV time and column inches alongside stories about the pandemic and protests seeking racial justice that have spread across the U.S. following police killings of black Americans.
“The saying among every political reporter is that you’re lucky enough to get to cover the biggest story in the world every four years,” said BuzzFeed News political reporter Ruby Cramer. “That is not the case in 2020, it turns out.”
Ms. Jones said MSNBC would have a “light footprint” at the events in Milwaukee, Charlotte and Jacksonville. The network is planning to cover the conventions mostly from outside the venues, relying on pool cameras for key footage and positioning reporters outdoors where they can socially distance from one another.
“Our focus is covering the story,” Ms. Jones said. “It doesn’t mean we have to be in the middle of the story, if it’s going to put our people in danger.”
Fox News is planning to produce its coverage of the party conventions remotely, though it will have some correspondents on-site, said Cherie Grzech, vice president of politics and the Washington bureau at Fox News. Ms. Grzech said Fox News would reduce its footprint at the conventions.
“It’s very important that people understand the responsibility that we hold as journalists to be there and to cover the event in the best way that we possibly can by keeping our personnel safe,” Ms. Grzech said. Fox News parent Fox Corp. and Wall Street Journal parent News Corp share common ownership.
Network producers are already beginning to look past the conventions to the general-election debates and election night. The coronavirus has caused mail-in voting to increase, which has resulted in longer delays for deciding elections, said Joe Lenski, co-founder and executive vice president of Edison Research. That means cable news networks might have to produce coverage that drags on days past election night.
CNN is already planning for that possibility, preparing for a scenario in which the network could hand off coverage from one team to the next over the course of days until a winner is declared.
The competing news stories of the pandemic, nationwide protests and the campaign have driven cable-news ratings well past their peaks during the 2016 presidential election. CNN, MSNBC and Fox News have all attracted more viewers in prime time in the second quarter than they have in the past five years as of June 21, according to Nielsen.
In prime time, longtime ratings leader Fox News remains No. 1 among viewers in the coveted 25-to-54-year-old demographic and among all viewers. CNN's ratings are off their highs from earlier this quarter but up substantially over the first quarter. MSNBC held on to the second spot in total prime-time viewers but fell further behind the other networks in the demographic, with its ratings in prime time among 25-to-54-year-olds dropping slightly compared with the previous quarter.
Much of that growth is being driven by a sharp rise in political advertising, a mainstay of cable news, according to data firm Advertising Analytics LLC. Total ad spending on the presidential election is expected to top $3.2 billion, according to the firm, nearly triple the total ad spend of the 2016 presidential election.
—John McCormick contributed to this article.
Write to Benjamin Mullin at Benjamin.Mullin@wsj.com
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