It is estimated that better than a third of the total US population tunes into the Super Bowl, and President Barack Obama has taken advantage of that fact by allowing interviews before each of the last two.
The 2011 edition of the game will be no exception, and Obama’s host will be Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly.
Super Bowl XLV is scheduled for 2/6/11 and will be held in the Dallas-Fort Worth TX Metroplex, more precisely at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington TX.
In 2009, NBC had rights to the event, and Matt Lauer got the Obama interview gig.
In 2010, the Super Bowl was seen on CBS, and Katie Couric did the Obama interview honors.
According to Nielsen, over 106M people tuned in to Super Bowl XLIV last year.
Plus looking at previous Super Bowls see Super Bowl broke all-time viewing record
Since attaining the White House, Obama has appeared on Fox News Channel only one time. He appeared on The O’Reilly Factor in 2008 while his battle for the White House with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was still in progress.
RBR-TVBR observation: Both the Obama campaign and the Obama White House have had a contentious go of it with FNC, but at the same time, there have been overtures of peace between Obama and FNC from time to time.
RBR-TVBR thinks, however, that there isn’t that much to read into this particular interview. Fox has the Super Bowl, so Fox gets the interview. End of story – unless O’Reilly goes out of his way to make it interesting. But even if he does, we’d expect Obama to come up with the blandest answer he can possibly get away with.
More on Super Bowl XLIV review:
CBS scores Super Week
Tops in TV for 2010 rankes, and Super Bowls
