The Presidential Press Conference Schedule Shuffle

I’ve got to believe that the TV networks are wondering when President Obama’s economic recovery program is going to help them out.

Sure, the President threw NBC a pretty big bone with his appearance on “The Tonight Show,” and his interview on “60 Minutes” tonight no doubt helped out CBS, but even they can’t be happy about the President’s press conference Tuesday night in the heart of sweeps.

Not only does it cost the networks millions of dollars in ad revenue, it also completely messes with their schedules and causes ratings confrontations they really don’t want.

The Presidential Press Conference will air Tuesday, March 24th at 8 p.m. on all four networks. Here are the scheduling changes as a result…

FOX will air a rerun of “House” at 9 p.m. The “American Idol” performance show will move to Wednesday at 8 p.m. and the results show to Thursday at 8 p.m. “Lie to Me” and “Bones” will both be preempted this week…

On Tuesday, CBS will bump “NCIS” to 9 p.m. and “The Mentalist” to 10 p.m. preempting “Without a Trace”…

NBC will move its two-hour episode of “The Biggest Loser: Couples” to 9 p.m. and preempt “Law & Order: SVU”…

ABC’s schedule will see the least harm as it will only be forced to preempt the “Dancing With the Stars” recap show…

This sets up a very interesting week ratings-wise for “American Idol.” On Wednesday, it will compete with “Survivor,” which relocates to Wednesday for the week because of NCAA basketball; and on Thursday, it will take on NCAA basketball. I look for it to have one of its lowest-rated weeks ever, which is a shame because I look for it to be the best show of the season so far…

I understand the President wanting to get the word out about his economic recovery program, but I think he could have waited one more week until sweeps was completed. He will need the networks to help him sell this thing and if he does this to many more times, he’s going to lose them…

Photo Credit: Paul Drinkwater/NBC