Senator Barack Obama 30-minute special

Senator Barack Obama (AP photo)

Watch Senator Barack Obama's 30-minute TV special: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtREqAmLsoA

The Obama campaign has been a pioneering campaign. Over 5-million internet contributors, daily text/email messaging, face book and my space pages, youtube accounts, automated monthly contributor billing, acceptance speech in front of 80-thousand people, grassroots mastery, and ultimately defeating supposedly "un-beatable" Democratic favorite Senator Hillary (and Bill) Clinton, and working on the Republicans. Now a 30-minute paid special airing on seven networks -- CBS, NBC, Univision, BET, TVOne, MSNBC, and surprisingly even Fox News Network. CNN News network declined to run Senator Obama's special, and talks between ABC-TV and the Obama campaign fell apart. It CNN and ABC would have ran Obama's program, then nine television networks would have aired it. Unprecedented.

"We were approached by the Obama campaign and declined their request," said Sal Petruzzi, senior vice president for public relations of Turner Broadcasting, CNN's parent company. "We did not want to pre-empt our programming lineup with a 30-minute spot. We would rather use our air to continue to cover the campaign, candidates and issues like we always do from all points of view with the best political team on television." Yeah right Sal. Look closely to Sal's statement. Sal called Obama's program a "spot". "Spot" means a commercial in broadcast lingo. Sal couldn't even respect the Obama special as a program.

Furthermore CNN just hired """Comedian""" D.L. Hughley quickly and conveniently right before the November fourth election to do a weekly hour long Political show. I guess CNN needed someone to give the Black political point of view. And out of all the Black Talk show hosts in the world to interview, CNN felt that D.L. Hughley was absolutely the best political choice. Yes to D.L. Hughley's show, no to Senator Obama's program.

A CNN Fact: No African-American broadcast journalist have had their own "named" daily show on CNN to date -- not even overnights. Examples of a "named" show would be: The Anderson Cooper show, The Lou Dobbs show, The Larry King show, Campbell Brown show, etc...

An ABC spokeswoman declined to comment about ABC network's talks with the Obama campaign. "As a matter of policy we don't comment about clients with whom we are doing business," said Julie Hoover of ABC. The Obama campaign has bought advertising on ABC in the past, she said, "but they did not buy the half hour." Obama taped an interview with ABC's Charles Gibson, which is ran Thursday 10-30-08, the day after Obama's 30-minute TV special.

The Obama 30-minute special was a success. The program was viewed by 33.6 million people with an average of 21.7 percent of total U.S. television viewers watching Senator Obama's Television program http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/media_entertainment/217-of-households-in-top-local-tv-markets-watched-obama-infomercial/. Baltimore and Philadelphia lead the pack with 31.3 percent and 29 percent of thier TV viewers witnessing the Obama special respectively. Washington DC was 7th in the nation with 26.8 percent of their viewers watching Obama's special, and New York was 8th with 26.2 percent of their TV viewers checking it out http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/ranking.pdf