John McCain Has Big Competition For His Acceptance Speech
There isn’t going to be a huge audience for McCain’s speech tonight, certainly not compared with the TV and live audience for Obama’s speech, not with the competition from the football game. The Republicans will likely whine about their subpar ratings, as they whine about everything else, but their incompetent scheduling is to blame, nothing else.
I see around the net all sorts of Republicans are getting ready to watch John McCain’s acceptance speech tonight. They think they’ll be energized or something, and they even think that McCain will make his pitch to independent voters. Oh, yeah, like that will work after choosing a religious whack job who thinks a pipeline is “God’s Will” as his running mate. Be that as it may, McCain’s real problem is getting anyone to pay attention, because he’s got bigtime competition tonight on the TV dial.
First, while not in direct competition, Barack Obama will be appearing with Bill O’Reilly tonight at 8:00. If Barack speaks well, which is quite likely, then he’s going to attract a whole bunch of comments from the talking heads covering the RNC, if not before McCain’s speech, then in the aftermath of it. FoxNews is going to get ratings for the O’Reilly show, no doubt. In fact, I’m willing to be FoxNews gets higher ratings for the O’Reilly Factor than it does for their coverage of McCain’s speech.
Second, tonight is the beginning of the NFL season, with the defending Super Bowl champion New York Giantrs taking on the Washington Redskins. As an Eagles fan, I hope both teams lose, but that’s immaterial. People will watch, and they will get sleepy over their beers as they watch. A huge segment of the viewing public will then drop off to sleep rather than watching McCain, who just might have put them to sleep anyway. Sure, the NFL did a favor for the RNC by moving the game up so that it won’t conflict with McCain’s speech, but that’s not going to help the viewership for McCain all that much. Look for Obama’s speech to beat McCain’s in a landslide in the ratings.
McCain may actually refrain from attacking during his speech tonight, but millions of independent and swing voters will miss that last opportunity to view a positive McCain. Scheduling their convention in such an incompetent manner is on the Republicans, it isn’t the fault of anyone else, but you can be sure they’ll whine about it.
Markos has details concerning the ratings race between the two conventions. McCain has already lost this one, and I’ll bet he gets only two thirds the viewership Obama got.
Obama on O’Reilly concerns me because BillO controls the mic, and BillO has a history of just making shit up to make his interview subjects look bad. Obama’s smart and knowledgeable, but no one can be prepared with statistics off the top of their head to refute whatever the interviewer may make up to make them look bad.
We’ll see - I can see the tactical side of appearing on Fox at this point (showing no fear by going right into the heart of the opposition’s stronghold), but I feel like yelling “it’s a TRAP” at the top of my lungs…
BillO will be on his best behavior. He knows that if he starts something every media outlet will talk about what a waste of air time he really is. Sure, he’ll satisfy some of his FauxNews viewers, but many independents watch that station, and they will be both turned off by BillO and be sympathetic to Obama for the treatment. Watch this turn out decidely well.