When President Obama addresses the nation Wednesday night, he won’t quite have a rolling roadblock of major broadcast networks and cable news networks. Fox Broadcasting Network has decided to sit this one out in favor of scripted entertainment, allowing its two cable sisters to carry the President.
Fox said, “The Fox Broadcasting Company will not air the Presidential News Conference on Wednesday, April 29 at 8:00 PM. Fox’s sister networks, Fox News Channel and the Fox Business Network, will air the press conference in its entirety. Fox will be alerting viewers with an onscreen graphic at the top of the 8:00 PM hour that the press conference is available on Fox News Channel and the Fox Business Network.”
Fox’s regularly scheduled program is “Lie to Me.”
According to the Live Feed, Fox may be the only one of the big four networks with much to lose – the others do not have high-powered programming in the time slot and one of them, NBC, has a rerun plugged in.
The Washington Post estimated total ad revenue losses could amount to $9-10M, although it would appear that Fox will be salvaging at least a portion of that amount.
RBR/TVBR observation: The viability of Fox News Channel allows Fox to preserve its schedule without ignoring the event altogether, a luxury shared only by NBC. As Fox has Fox News Channel and Fox Business Channel to cover the event. Smart move on Fox’s part as we are sure many affilaites are happier with programming content.
