Tuned InTV Ratings
The ratings are in for President Obama’s healthcare forum on ABC last night, and as they say on the doctor shows: we’ve checked the charts, and it doesn’t look good. Less than five million people tuned in for the earnest but dull Q&A session on the American health system, compared with the over nine million who watched NBC’s Brian …
Tuned InUncategorized
Soon after ABC announced it would devote a day to covering President Obama’s healthcare proposals, including a primetime townhall, Republicans began complaining that the program would be an “infomercial” for the President’s plans. And the event started on an auspicious note for the President’s argument that the healthcare system needed …
Tuned InUncategorized
I spent a good part of the first half of the week working on a column for the print TIME, which, because some country can’t figure out how to properly hold/rig an election, ended up being held for lack-of-space reasons. Oh, death of print—why can’t you come sooner!
Part of the column dealt with ABC News’ plan next Wednesday to …
Tuned InUncategorized
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVAgAJ9MD4o]
Last night on Late Show, David Letterman took to his desk and delivered a second—or depending on your view of his sincerity last week, first, or first-and-a-halfth—apology to the family of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, for a joke he made last week about Palin’s daughter getting …
Tuned InUncategorized
So, as I type this, it’s 9 a.m., and the lead story at the top of the hour on MSNBC is a Democratic and a Republican strategist debating each other on the feud between Sarah Palin and David Letterman. The news judgment shouldn’t surprise me, I guess: Palin launched her latest broadside against Dave on NBC’s Today Show, with Matt Lauer, …
Tuned InNews Media
Yesterday President Obama announced that he would oppose the court-ordered release of photos depicting abuse of prisoners by U.S. authorities overseas. As I did when the Bush Administration opposed similar photo releases, or fought the depiction of caskets of war dead returning from Iraq, I believe this is the wrong move. (Among the …
Tuned InNews Media
On the drive down, we stopped at a TGI Friday’s and I ordered a cheeseburger. When the waitress brought the food I asked her if she had any Dijon mustard. Dan [legislative aide Dan Shomon] shook his head.
“He doesn’t want Dijon,” he insisted, waving the waitress off. “Here”—he shoved a yellow bottle of French’s mustard in my …
Tuned InTV Ratings
Like a much-hyped drama debut shedding viewers to find its level, President Obama’s press conferences are drawing fewer viewers each time out. The President’s Wednesday night outing drew 28.8 million viewers on all networks covering, down 29% from his March conference and down from 49.5 million for his first. Nielsen has the numbers. …
Tuned InNews Media
Today, of course, news organizations like this one are in overkill mode dissecting President Obama’s first 100 days in office. The broadcast and news networks will all be covering tonight’s Presidential press conference (except Fox network, which will mark Tim Roth’s first 100 days in Lie to Me). While we’re at it, though, we might ask: …
Tuned InUncategorized
In times past, journalists have complained that Presidents have been too unavailable to take questions from the press. This year, TV broadcast networks have had the opposite complaint—that President Obama’s prime-time addresses have too frequently cut into valuable airtime, costing millions in unrecoverable advertising revenue.
This …
Tuned InUncategorized
I’ve got two pieces in the magazine this week, but I wanted to link them in the same post because they are, in a weird way, about the same thing. The first is Here’s to the Death of Broadcast, and if you’re a regular reader you’ll know it’s basically a polished-up version of an argument I’ve made on this blog: that the very …
Tuned InUncategorized
File under Culture Wars, Upcoming: Joel Surnow, the vocally conservative co-creator of Fox’s 24, is shopping around a ten-hour miniseries about the Kennedy family. And from the description in Variety, anyway, it doesn’t sound like a love letter. Reports the trade mag, the press release from the potential project’s distributor says it …
Tuned InUncategorized
Speaking of Barack Obama Takes Over Your TV Week, it’s going to be the subject—sort of—of my column in TIME this week. And one thing I’d been doing in prepping for the column was to go back and listen to some of FDR’s fireside chats, which are repeatedly held up as a model for Presidential outreach.
One point I make is that the …
