Political coverage this year has not always generated large audiences. In fact, it can drive viewers away, as ABC learned when it looked at the minute-by-minute ratings of “Good Morning America” and saw that people sometimes tuned out when political news was shown.

More than ever, networks are also betting that their politically minded viewers will go to the Web to get their news. “You know, we’re going to be live-streaming, so there is available live coverage minute by minute for everybody in this country,” said Diane Sawyer, the ABC anchor, who will be on some of the network’s online broadcasts. “When you look back historically at the kind of coverage you were saturated in before, if you add in cable and online streaming and tweeting and blogging, pound for pound do we have less?” She ventured no.

According to Nielsen Media Research, four years ago 99 percent of video was consumed through the television set. This year, that number has fallen to 94 percent, with 3 percent being consumed on computers and 3 percent on mobile devices. Not huge numbers, said Pat McDonough, a senior vice president at Nielsen, but figures that nonetheless show that people are not less interested in the news, but are just consuming it differently. “If you’re really interested in something, you’re probably accessing it somewhere else,” she said.

For its part, the Romney campaign is looking for other ways to amplify its message beyond the network broadcasts. Mr. Romney will sit for two extended television interviews, one with Scott Pelley of CBS News, which is set to be shown in segments during the convention, and one with Chris Wallace of Fox News. Mr. Wallace’s interview, for which he was given rare access to Mr. Romney at his lakefront estate in New Hampshire, will be shown on Sunday.

Mr. Pelley said that during its broadcast each night, CBS plans to show its own news stories when the convention programming gets too predictable.

“We also want to cut away when it’s just the scripted, sort of — and I’m searching for a better word than propaganda — but cut away when the convention isn’t providing much information to the audience,” he said.

Mr. Wallace said he was not anticipating anything like the electricity of the 2008 conventions.

“Will Obama’s speech be the same? Probably not,” he said. “And I agree that as interesting a figure and as consequential a figure as Paul Ryan is, it won’t be another Palin moment.”

Mr. Wallace recalled how conventions are not what they used to be. “My first convention was in 1964,” he said. “I was Walter Cronkite’s gofer — go for coffee, go for pencils. Those were the days of gavel-to-gavel coverage. Real business got done.”