The Obama Administration Strong Arms the Television Networks
By Patrick, on August 3rd, 2009
….and the networks are not liking it at all.
Via the
Washington Post:
In the days before President Obama’s last news conference, as the networks weighed whether to give up a chunk of their precious prime time, Rahm Emanuel went straight to the top.
Rather than calling ABC, the White House chief of staff phoned Bob Iger, chief executive of parent company Disney. Instead of contacting NBC, Emanuel went to Jeffrey Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric. He also spoke with Les Moonves, the chief executive of CBS, the company spun off from Viacom.
Whether this amounted to undue pressure or plain old Chicago arm-twisting, Emanuel got results: the fourth hour of lucrative network time for his boss in six months. But network executives have been privately complaining to White House officials that they cannot afford to keep airing these sessions in the current economic downturn.
The networks “absolutely” feel pressured, says Paul Friedman, CBS’s senior vice president: “It’s an enormous financial cost when the president replaces one of those prime-time hours. The news divisions also have mixed feelings about whether they are being used.”
While it is interesting to see how a president handles questions, Friedman says, “there was nothing” at the July 22 session, which was dominated by health-care questions. “There hardly ever is these days, because there’s so much coverage all the time.”
Well, it might have to do with something, with the fact that President Obama is nothing more than a sleazy Chicago Politician!
Of course, Liberals will say; “Well the Bush Administration did the same thing!”
Wrong.
Tensions have been building behind the scenes. Some television executives say the Bush administration informally floated possible news conference dates in advance, while Obama officials basically notify the networks of their plans. Such an approach prompted calls between White House officials and the top executives at each network, and a meeting between Gibbs and the Washington bureau chiefs.
Since the Reagan era, when cable news was in its infancy, prime-time presidential pressers have been a relative rarity. George H.W. Bush held one in 1992, but the broadcast networks dismissed it as an election-year event and refused to carry it. The following year, when Bill Clinton held his first evening news conference, CBS and ABC stiffed him; NBC carried the first half-hour; only CNN and PBS aired the whole thing. George W. Bush held four such events in eight years.
Can you say buyers remorse? The person whom the liberals thought they were electing the White Knight of hope and change; is nothing more than the black knight of cronyism and political corruption. This article goes on and on, and I recommend that you read it. This Administration is still running in campaign mode. Even worse so, than when Bush was in office. Even Michelle Malkin; when she was on “
The View” even said that Obama is nothing more than an extension of the Bush Administration’s overreaching use of the executive power, with the appointing of over 22 czars.
The whole “Hope & Change” line was nothing more than a stinking lie, and the American people and the liberal media are slowly, but very surely, waking up to this sobering fact.
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LMFAO Who wants to cry first for these shills?
White house strongarming networks....
