Presidential address could conflict with NFL’s opening night
Posted by Mike Florio on August 31, 2011, 7:42 PM EDT
ReutersThere’s an intriguing political scrum that could make things very interesting for the NFL and NBC next Thursday night.
As explained by the Associated Press (among others), President Obama wants to address a joint session of Congress on the evening of September 7, to lay out his new jobs proposal. But that conflicts with a California debate of Republican presidential candidates. The debate will be televised by MSNBC.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has declined, citing not the debate but the impact of a time-consuming “security sweep” on the activities of Congress that day, the first day on which the legislative body returns to work. Boehner has suggested as an alternative: September 8.
And on September 8, the Packers host the Saints on NBC.
Either way, NBC is caught in the middle. If Obama — a Bears fans — opts to try to overshadow the kickoff to the NFL season, and if NBC opts to televise the address to Congress on MSNBC and to proceed with the football game on NBC, the ratings could be phenomenal, given that the NFL would be the only major-network alternative for the millions of folks who have decided that the latest developments in partisan politics no longer need to witnessed live.