President Bush has asked the networks for some time on Monday night at 8pm for his immigration speech, so the networks are going to have to change things around a bit. - NBC will shorten Deal Or No Deal to 90 minutes.
- FOX will show all of Prison Break and 24 after Bush's speech.
ABC (Oprah's Legend's Ball special and the Grey's Anatomy season finale) and CBS (comedy lineup and CSI: Miami) won't announce their plans until Monday.
[via TV Tattle]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-13-2006 @ 1:43PM
Samuel McConnell said...
Oh, crap, I hope Grey's and 24 (my two favorite shows) don't conflict! :x
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5-13-2006 @ 1:53PM
Jimmy said...
Well, considering the public airwaves don't actually belong to the networks they they have an obligation to carry the president; however, they have, in the past, not carried speeches from the White House. The thing is, with three major 24-hour news networks on cable is there really a need to carry it on the broadcast networks? Granted, the president will get the most viewership from the public airwaves, but if it wasn't shown on the major networks, those who are interested in what he has to say would tune in the FOX, CNN, MSNBC. Moreover, the subject the president is going to discuss matters little to the vastg majority of Americans so his need to break into the networks' sweeps period must be annoying to all those Bush-loving media CEOs
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5-13-2006 @ 2:25PM
Tammy said...
I hate it when the President talks during sweeps month. Also why does it have to be in prime time? Why not during the 6 pm news or at 7 pm instead of Wheel of Fortune or Entertainment Tonight?
I don't undstand why they stick to the traditional 11 am or 8 pm press conferences anymore. That made sense when we just had 4 channels to choose from but now it doesn't. Do we know how many Americans don't have cable? What's the percentage? Just curious if those of us who are high tech, posting on blogs, etc. just don't realize how many people actually get their news from the 3 major networks and actually will watch Bush whenever he decides to have a press conference.
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5-13-2006 @ 8:32PM
SamMalone said...
This is really gonna mess up my DVR.
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5-13-2006 @ 8:46PM
elf said...
Tammy wrote: "I hate it when the President talks during sweeps month."
Well, I hate it when the president speaks. Period.
Considering this speech is about immigration, which was really not any kind of urgent, pressing issue until the GOP spin machine started pushing it to distract Americans from the failing war, the bloated and overly complicated Medicare program, soaring gas prices, obscene profits for oil companies and yet more tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy. They're just throwing another boogie-man into the fray to rouse their core, like they did with the non-existent gay marriage and flag burning threats. I would love to see the networks call Bush on this and tell him that this speech is not of significant importance to the general public to justify interrupting their schedules.
That said, NBC can easily cut 25 minutes out of an hour-long "Deal or No Deal" without anyone noticing, so cutting 25 minutes out of a two-hour block shouldn't be noticeable at all...
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