By and large, they personally forked out for his campaign, they voted for him, and they know he is capable of boosting TV ratings just by making an appearance.But executives at the Big Four broadcast networks are seething behind the scenes that President Obama has cost them about $30 million in cumulative ad revenue this year with his three primetime news conference pre-emptions.
Now top network execs quietly are hoping that Fox's well-publicized rejection of the president's April 29 presser will serve as precedent for denying future White House requests for prime airtime.
"We will continue to make our decisions on White House requests on a case-by-case basis, but the Fox decision gives us cover to reject a request if we feel that there is no urgent breaking news that is going to be discussed," said one network exec, who, like all, would not speak for attribution fearing repercussions from the administration.
"If the president wants to make it tough for your network, he can," the exec added.
Another network executive confided, "Nobody wants to take on the White House, so we'll have to tiptoe through this."
This is probably the most telling quote of the whole piece.
"The millions of ad dollars the president is costing us could help us keep some of those people working."
Fox decided that they didn't want to run the most recent presser on their network but instead run it on Fox News Channel and Fox Business Channel, and in a sense they did pay a price for the decision -- their reporter was not allowed to ask Obama a question. But Fox may have set a precedent, so now networks can get braver with the White House if the president makes another frivilous request.
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