President Obama coverage pays for networks: Politico

Quoted via Politico:

Reuters photo via PoliticoFor all the talk of liberal media bias, there may be a more prosaic reason for all the airtime the networks shower on President Barack Obama: He’s good for their bottom line.

It’s hard to quantify how much money the new president is making for the networks, but media and marketing experts say there’s clearly an Obama effect. Last week’s health care forum on ABC brought in more viewers at 10 p.m. than the network had had in six weeks. Both parts of NBC’s “Inside the Obama White House” cracked the weekly top 10. And there’s a huge spillover benefit: Networks airing Obama specials can squeeze every drop out of them for morning shows, nightly newscasts, cable and online — goosing the ratings all around because the public is still tuning in whenever the president is on.

“When an A-lister shows up, it does spike the ratings,” said Shari Ann Brill, president of media-buying firm Carat USA. And since entering the Oval Office, Obama has been “the ultimate A-lister,” Brill said. more