The Thrill Is Gone

Which will be the first to say f**k you to Rahm Emanuel the next time the prez wants prime time?  ABC, CBS, or NBC?  Obama's thug-in-chief browbeat the heads of all three networks for the last press conference.  Ratings are dwindling.  Networks are losing millions in advertising. 

Howard Kurtz Wash Post:  Mark Whitaker, NBC's Washington bureau chief, says Obama "is at risk of overexposure" and suggests the sessions are losing their novelty.

"Every time a president holds a press conference there is potential for news to be made, as he did, probably to his regret, with his comments on the Gates case," Whitaker says. Still, he says, "we would feel better" if White House officials "were approaching us with the sense that they had something new to say, rather than that they just wanted to continue a dialogue with the American people. There are other ways of continuing that dialogue than taking up an hour of prime time."

Sarah Feinberg, Emanuel's spokeswoman, says that after press secretary Robert Gibbs heard that network officials had concerns about programming conflicts, "Rahm made a round of calls to network executives to discuss ways the White House could accommodate concerns." The upshot was that the news conference was moved up an hour, to 8 p.m. -- a boon to NBC, which had a 9 p.m. special featuring overnight British singing star Susan Boyle.

Emanuel tried to create a sense of momentum -- calling Disney's Iger last, for instance, and saying he had secured agreement from the other two networks.

Some calls had little impact. Emanuel reached GE's Immelt, a member of Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, after learning that NBC chief executive Jeff Zucker was traveling. But Immelt told him that it was Zucker's decision, and a subsequent call to Zucker yielded an agreement that NBC would provide live coverage.