Big TV may sharply cut '84 convention coverage

CBS News will not air gavel-to-gavel coverage of the 1984 political conventions, Thomas H. Wyman, president of CBS Inc., announced Wednesday. Monitor TV critic Arthur Unger reports that since both ABC and NBC have, in the past, declared that they would like an agreement to do the same, it seems apparent now that none of the three major networks will do complete coverage as in the past.

In addition, the CBS head called for a 24-hour voting day in which all polls would close simultaneously. This would eliminate protests against the network news practice of calling or predicting elections based on East Coast voting which ends before Western polls are closed.