Prime time slot of half an hour on Wednesday night for each network just before the presidential election is costing under $1 million for the Democratic candidate’s camp. The program produced by them will be telecast between 8 and 8.30 pm. Though there is no price concession offered to Obama, he gets to pay the lowest unit cost as prescribed by the Federal law.
According to CBS ratings, “The New Adventures of Old Christine” of Julia Louis Dreyfu Sitcom averaged viewer strength of 7.2 million in the voting age while the “Knight Rider of the NBC records 5.7million viewers. ABC’s “Pushing Daisies recorded around 5.2 million viewers in the voting age group and Fox has viewer strength of 9.2 million for “Bones”. A lot of other broadcasters too have been approached by the Obama camp though nothing looks to be finalized yet. October 29th will see Fox airing Obama’s speech while may displace its Game 6 of the World Series. ABC will have to forego its struggling dramedy “Daisies” which has seen a fall due to the strike by its writers for 100 days. ABC has so far unsuccessfully been trying to re launch this freshman series. If ABC does not join this roadblock buy by the Democratic camp, it may get viewers to sample the once popular series.
With NBC and CBS canceling their scripted programs to accommodate Obama, CW airing its reality show “America’s Next Top Model’ and Fox probably telecasting baseball, “Pushing Daisies” will probably have a chance being the only scripted series in that particular prime time slot.
