The Obama campaign wanted to buy a half hour of broadcast prime-time at 8pm Wednesday across CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox (no love for the CW!). CBS and NBC agreed nearly immediately, Fox agreed once it got the agreement of Major League Baseball to postpone the beginning of a potential World Series game 6 (now as it turns out, game 5.5), but ABC didn’t want to disrupt its already struggling Wednesday night line up, so it initially refused and offered the Obama campaign different airdates/times.
However, as Lisa de Moraes at the Washington Post reports, the Obama campaign wanted to create what’s called a “roadblock” across broadcast TV, which is when all broadcast networks simultaneously air the same program, so other ABC dates/times were not interesting to them. Although, looking at the numbers, a broadcast TV “roadblock” isn’t quite as imposing today when only about 50% of prime-time viewing is on the broadcast networks as it was 30 years ago when the broadcast share was 90%.
As it turns out, ABC waited too long, and once it agreed to sell the time, the Obama campaign wasn’t interested. Attempting to make lemonade from these lemons, ABC hopes it can take advantage of the unique political counter-programming opportunity and boost the fortunes of the pummeled Pushing Daisies. ABC has begun using the promotional ad ““Wednesday you have a choice — get political with the other networks or watch a new episode of “Pushing Daisies”.
Or you could watch cable.
Update: But not MSNBC if you don’t want to watch politics, the Obama ad will air there as well.
Update #2: But you could watch CNN, which turned down the Obama 30 min ad show buy, or Fox News who wasn’t asked.
Update #3: Univision, BET and TV One are also carrying Obama’s paid half-hour TV address.
I think that’s a mistake for ABC, anything that airs after Obama will have a significant lead in. I hope this works for daises, but I feel that everyone is just too curious as to what Obama is going to say in those 30 mins to tune into anything else.
The only thing that could make this work for PD is that the Obama audience will be fragmented across several nets, so PD could end up winning just because of that. But I don’t think this is going to significantly boost its ratings. (And I don’t think Obama’s address will get convention acceptance speech type numbers.)
Julia: 7 million. Do you have the over or the under?
Like you would take the over.
(Unless you mean Obama, in which case under on a per network basis, but over if you count them all together.)
hmmm… interesting move. i dont know if its bad or good, but hey,ABC is right. If you dont waant to watch politics, you have to watch pushing daisies. PD only gets like 5 million viewers now, i am gonna go out on a limb and say they raise that by around 2 million.
Or they could turn off the TV, switch to CW (maybe 90210 will pick up?), put on a cable show, etc. Like I said, I don’t see a big increase out of this.
Please have we not heard enough of Obama and the networks in the tank for him!
I hope people shut off there TV’s and do something productive. Like get out and Vote McCain!!! enough already…
an elitist would have said “their” TVs.
Lori, whoa there girl, if you can’t see that this item was 90% about television and *maybe* 10% about Obama, you need to adjust your perspective.
As for the networks being in the tank for him, that’s a matter of opinion, but this is TV time he’s *paying* for.
It won’t necessarily be bad for Daisies. People who don’t wanna watch the Obama special can just watch a regular primetime show. And its stupid that the same special is on 5 channels I’m sure if people wanna watch the special they’ll be able to find wayever channel its on without it having to be on 5 of them at the same time.
But, Bill, didn’t you hear? He got a DEAL! They must be in the tank for him! (That has nothing to do with the laws in place about selling time to national candidates at the lowest price currently offered.)
Dan, I think it turns out to be mildly positive for Daisies. As for buying 5 networks at once, its hard to gauge the PR value you gain for doing something like that. And it definitely helps get your message out. Trust me, most people have a much harder time finding things on television than you might think
WOOHOO!!! Hopefully this works for Pshing Daisies. I’d hate to see sucha high quality show get cancelled because A.) ABC doesn’t promote the show and B.) the american public at large is so used to crap on tv they don’t know what to do with a high quality show.
Honestly its a week until the big day, what more could you possibly have to tell me that I havent heard already Mr. Obama???
At least I’ll have me some Pushing Daisies to watch!!!
What if Pushing Daisies hits some outrageous number, say, 15 million total viewers? What if the CW hits double or triple its normal numbers? Such a phenomenon would indicate that Americans – at least Nielsen Americans – won’t choose politics when there’s something else on TV.
Personally, I don’t think it was in the interest of fairness for one candidate to buy 30 minutes’ worth of ad time on all the networks, when his opponent could not afford to do the same.
It will likely be a typical Wednesday night for me – Naked Archaeologist and Mythbusters are my usual choices, and they’ll remain unaffected by the broadcast networks
.
Who said anything about a “high quality” show? We’re talking about Pushing Daisies!
You mean ABC wont be airing THE MESSIAH? Uh oh, they better watch out or they will end up having their FCC license revoked when he becomes President. Im sick to death of windbag politicians sucking up air time.
How can you tell when a politician is lying? When their lips move.
Its now or never
Why can’t McCain afford to do the same? He CAN. He just chooses not to. I think the budget for that went to Palin’s makeup artist or maybe her shoes.
I think it’s funny all the bashing Obama gets for doing something Perot did in the 90s (and worked, if he hadn’t backed out of the Race, God only knows what would have happened). If he uses the 30 minutes like Perot did and explains in an easy to understand manner HOW he is going to help the economy he could seal the deal.
Obama detractors have long said he is just sound bites and speeches, well he’s got 30 minutes to lay it out for all of us or provide more sound bites.
Why can’t McCain afford to do the same? He simply can’t. McCain agreed to abide by Presidential election reform and use the CAPPED money from the fund created when taxpayers check the box to donate $1 to fund Presidential campaigns, to reduce the influence of special interest money. Obama initially agreed to the same arrangement, and trumpeted this as part of his “CHANGE” mantra, and then famously went BACK ON HIS WORD. He could not resist the glow of the almighty dollar, and to be fair to him, the willingness of so many to donate, donate, donate to him. So McCain’s funding is totally capped, while Obama’s is unlimited as long as folks and special interests keep sending him money. He has money to burn, so that is why is buying this TV time. McCain has 40% of the money Obama has and could not ever purchase network time like this.
If they do cancel PD, you cant say they didnt try
IS ABC trying to cancel Pushing Daisies.
Rob, actually McCain CAN afford it. It’s only $1M per network. He can afford to pay a MAKEUP ARTIST $11,000 a week! He can afford the show. Talk that he can’t is just BS anti-dem party talk. I’m a registered Republican. I can see the obvious. All this hate really needs to go away. Why hate 40% of the country? It’s stupid. The behavior is idiotic.
I’d be watching Pushing Daisies anyway…
I have a feeling this one is gonna backfire. Sucks, but with the ratings the debates got I wouldn’t be surprised if running opposite Obama was the final nail in PD’s coffin. ABC is trying to give it a chance but I think that not coming back after the strike was responsible for killing this show. The numbers don’t lie for all these shows that didn’t return in the Spring(Chuck, Pushing Daisies, and Heroes). With all the cable options in this ADD/”what have you done for me lately?” riddled viewing public aren’t gonna rediscover these shows they may have watched on a regular basis before the strike hit.
I cannot help but hope that PD and whatever’s on the CW see big upticks in ratings tonight. I could see how an independent or third-party candidate would need to invest money in such a format, as Perot did. Those candidates simply don’t get mainstream coverage. But for one of the two major party candidates to feel the need to sell themselves in such a manner is just not sitting well. It reeks of narcissism, IMHO, the stench of self-glorification. It’s absolutely hypocritical to nit-pick McCain’s campaign spending when Obama went back on his word regarding public funding! He has nearly ten times as much money as McCain because he broke his word. He refused to play by the same rules as McCain.
OK, sorry, I’ll try not to use this website to rant about politics
I’m gonna leave this comment from a TV WATCHER’S POV. After all, isn’t this a TV SITE?
I’m gonna leave this comment from a TV WATCHER’S POV. After all, isn’t this a TV SITE?
I have no desire to watch a political speech. By EITHER candidate. I voted a week ago. By trying to create a roadblock, they are depriving me from watching what I want. Luckily, I love Pushing Daisies, so I get to have my cake tonight.
If there is truth in claims that the mainstream media loves loves Obama, then there would be some irony if the Obama campaign might inadvertently put a few more nails in the coffin of ABC Wednesday night.
I suspect that shows launched in the 2007 fall season are all doomed. They premiered late (Cashmere Mafia didn’t even come on until December), were stunted by the writers’ strike and now the 2008 presidential campaign. Time will tell.