The White House achieved nearly total local television market saturation by having the President's Grand Ole Opry speech televised on the WSMV (NBC affiliate), NewsChannel 5 and their cable 5+ station (ABC affiliate), the 2 Fox stations (local Channel 17 and cable's Fox News), MSNBC (cable), and CNN (cable). The only local station not televising the speech live was Channel 2, which interrupted programming momentarily to announce the President's speech, before returning to its regularly scheduled and popular soap opera, "All My Children."
While I'm not a fan of soap operas and whatever the story line on "All My Children," it had to be better than the "soap opry" in Donelson, where Mr. Bush gave his standard utopian call to conversion to a hand-picked audience, comparing himself once again to Reagan, Truman, Roosevelt, et al., and preaching that freedom inevitably leads to peace (a point which seems continuously strained by realities in Iraq and the West Bank). I was puzzled by NewsChannel 5 carrying the speech on both of its channels. Managers must have figured that Mr. Bush was going to get higher ratings than the regularly scheduled "Talk of the Town." No doubt.
You should have listened. It was a good speech. Too bad.
ReplyDeleteI listened. I especially enjoyed the climax, where he pledged to make the medical world safe from trial lawyers and the "Senators who represent them." That got the longest sustained ovation, but its main function was to warm them up so that they would not lapse into a bored funk with his discussion of alternative car batteries and ethanol. (We all know how much his target audience enjoys discussions about cutting our dependence on fossil fuels). He had to throw them red meat before putting them to bed. And he referred to "Gatlin" 3 or 4 times, which seemed to go over well.
ReplyDeleteI can definitely see why you would characterize it as "good."