Talk About Bad Planning: McCain to Speak Tonight, the Start of Football Season

Posted by Steven Reynolds, The All Spin Zone at 1:51 PM on September 4, 2008.

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 Giants 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.

Steven Reynolds is a regular blogger for the All Spin Zone