Primetime Specials

Whether you like him or not, you have to admit that President Obama is making an effort to bring a lot more transparency back to the White House and what decisions are being made. Sure the arguement can be made that although they are giving a lot more news conferences in this administration they aren't necessarily answering the questions that they are asked. Be that as it may, there is a significant difference between the lethargic and "aw-gee... do I have to?" attitude that was shown towards the media for the past 8 years. When President Bush gave a primetime address you could be sure that it was either because he wanted to announce another major plan or because he was being advised to do so.

One can make the arguement that perhaps that attitude from the previous administration lent itself to an air of importance to anything being said. I suppose it makes sense that if you only speak to the media in an open forum once or twice in a year then perhaps it was because it is something worth speaking on. Maybe the Obama administration is trying the opposite tact by overwhelming us with primetime speeches that really don't give us more information than we already have but the fact of the matter is that he and his staff appear to want to interface with the public regularly to show them that they are listening to what the people are saying.

Now I'm sure people will tell me about how the media (or specificallly the media who Sarah Palin referred to as the 'elite' media) play favoritism when it comes to President Obama. How they don't put him under the same scrutiny that they used to place President Bush or his administration under. I think the key difference there is in the fact that Obama is comfortable speaking his thoughts and ideas to the media whereas Bush used to appear more flustered than anything when it came to media appearances. Although I wouldn't take this apparent 'love' by the media to mean they are completely ga-ga over the fact that Obama is making so many appearances on the air lately.

I think it's safe to say that the average John (I shudder to say Joe as I keep thinking of the over-indulged 'Joe the Plumber') isn't interested in hearing their President over and over again; rather they want to find out if Jack Bauer will stop the latest batch of terrorists on '24' or whether the island will ever be found by all the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 ever again on 'Lost' and so the networks feel that they are losing potential revenue over the fact that their keystone programs are being pre-empted by the President.

Sure there may be some heartache over it but I was thinking about it, I can't think of a single show that I watch that was displaced by the President's speech last night. In fact I don't think any major show has been pre-empted in a long while by the President. Perhaps he is astute enough to realize that people would be upset no matter how profound his news if 'Gossip Girl' was interrupted for a week. I don't think it's going to be a major issue as we continue going forward for the next four years but I'm sure it's something Obama is thinking about. The people voted him into office to make some change and he's attempting to do so. He's also attempting to keep people on his side by not interrupting their favorite shows... which is probably a good thing.