FUMBLE: PRESIDENTIAL TUNE OUT

A few weeks ago we talked about the potential for communications over-exposure for President Barack Obama with his seemingly daily photo-ops and media events, from his primetime press conferences to his NCAA Sweet Sixteen basketball picks, to the planting of a garden on the White House lawn. Now I supposed we can add several reports about the new family dog and even one story that showed pictures of the Obamas in the White House screening room watching something with 3-D glasses on. The danger, we suggested then, was that without some kind of pause, people could begin to tune the President out, which is dangerous when there is an important message to deliver to America and the world. Well, it happened this week when Fox TV declined to broadcast live the President’s Wednesday primetime news conference to mark his 100th day in office. Read into it what you will about the fact that Fox will broadcast a regularly scheduled program called “Lie To Me” instead of Obama. The fact is that every time the President pre-empts primetime programming it costs the networks about $10 million (U.S.) in lost advertising revenue according to the Associated Press – and in the current U.S. economy the networks are in enough pain as it is. Several of them have complained to the White House about how often Obama seeks to take to the airwaves. As AP reported: “An executive at one of the three other broadcasters, who asked for anonymity because the conversations were private, said that network’s executives had expressed concern to the White House about the frequency of prime-time news conferences and the financial sacrifice they were making in carrying the event.” We all, as communicators, have to balance our need to frequently be in the media with the public’s reasonable patience for hearing about us repeatedly, given the thousands of commercial and news messages the average citizen is hit with daily. To have maximum impact, we need to pick our spots.