About that very special Barack Obama the other night, Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey says
The ratings will be what depresses Team Obama, though. Despite having a near-monopoly on broadcast television and no particularly compelling competition, only one-fifth of the nation bothered to watch. That doesn’t exactly scream enthusiasm, and the crashing waves of a landslide may just be imaginary.
Barack Obama’s campaign “infomercial” was the most-watched telecast in U.S. prime time on Wednesday, drawing an “American Idol”-size audience that easily eclipsed even the climax to baseball’s World Series.
More than 33.5 million viewers tuned in to watch the Democratic presidential nominee’s paid 30-minute message, aired on three major broadcast networks and four smaller channels, Nielsen Media Research reported on Thursday.
The three big networks alone, CBS, NBC and Fox, accounted for 25.5 million viewers combined — 1.2 million more than they drew in the same half hour a week ago, Nielsen said.
Citing critics from the New York Post, Morrissey says
The Obamamercial gave viewers tons of gloom and doom, with people talking about the tough economy (from their own houses and driving their own cars) to such an extent that the solution – Obama – hardly seems appropriate to the task involved.
Whether the show was good TV is, of course, subjective. Republicans have the review they want in the Murdoch-owned Post. Here’s what others are saying (as accumulated by the conservative US News):
The ad is receiving very positive coverage this morning. The Politico called it a “smoothly produced infomercial” that “weaved together American iconography — images of amber waves of grain, pickup trucks and American flags — with portraits of iconic voters, testimonials from politicians and one business figure, footage of Obama speeches and direct appeals from the candidate.” The Los Angeles Times says the spot “offered even the swiftest channel-flipper the chance to see Obama looking presidential.” The New York Post says “the heavily hyped piece let Obama — whom Republicans have tried to paint as ‘different’ and ‘foreign’ — reinforce the notion that he’s an everyman.” The New York Daily News reports, “From its opening image of a rippling field of golden grain to shots of small-town U.S.A., Obama’s epic echoed the style pioneered by Ronald Reagan’s famous feel-good ‘It’s Morning in America’ ads from his 1984 re-election campaign.”
Speaking on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360″, CNN analyst David Gergen, conceding that there were some elements of the video he could criticize, said, “At the risk of gushing, I must tell you overall it was extremely well done.” On its website, ABC News reported ABC News’ Chief Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulos said the infomercial “was worth ‘just about every penny.’” In the Washington Post, television critic Tom Shales writes, “Somehow both poetic and practical, spiritual and sensible, the paid political broadcast…was a montage of montages, a series of seamlessly blended segments interweaving the stories of embattled Americans with visions of their deliverer, Guess Who.”
Denial: It ain’t just a river in Egypt.
