Obama To Appear On "O'Reilly Factor" Thursday

New York Times:

Before Senator John McCain delivers his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday, Senator Barack Obama will make a marquee appearance of his own.

Call it counter-intuitive. He will appear on "The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox News Channel.

Read the whole story: New York Times

Comments

[notamarin]

It's a trap!

Never take on a bully who controls the editing. No matter how good you are, it is a dangerous game.

The religious right forum was a trap and Obama should not have taken the bait.

Not to mention we shouldn't reward that jerk or his network with ratings.

I really think this is one of the rare missteps for his campaign..­. pulling coverage or not.

[NTO08]

Obama can't preach to the choir 24/7...the­re are no votes to be gained by it...if he does well, it will attract some good press and may even help him a bit with a crowd he has studiously avoided.

[Rjmartinelli]

Of course it's a trap. But here is the problem, you cannot get into a war with a man who buys ink by the freighter.

I'm willing to wager that Obama's meeting with Murdoch was one of the most difficult meetings of his life. You might as well be dealing with a foreign and hostile head of state.

The man is powerful and ruthless. The problem is that none of us in the public can even begin to guess at his motivations. My question is: Will we be seeing a curveball?

Who do you think will sell more papers if they get elected? McCain or Obama?

[Smirk]

Yes, an Obama win would give them the chance to alternate between playing guard dog and pretending to be victimized conservatives.

[CaptainZero1969]

I think it's a pretty good idea. It's titillating and will, without a doubt, keep the non-tivo set tuned in to Barack rather than McCain. And it'll show everyone how BHO can handle a bully. You don't see Johnny going out and tussling with Olbermann do you? What's the matter Colonel Sanders? Chicken?

[DelvinMcGee]

that's a bit of apples to oranges comparison, since Olberman doesn't appear in the top 20 news programs and O Reilly is consistently number one.

[catinca]

oh please...w­ith you right wing idiots ...o'reill­y is not news it's propoganda! anyone with a brain knows that

[NTO08]

True, Olbermann's ratings are about the same as Paid Programming at 3AM.

[notamarin]

Huh? Wrong.

[FreelanceWriter]

>> It's titillating and will, without a doubt, keep the non-tivo set tuned in to Barack rather than McCain.

That statement makes no sense at all. The largest demographic watching will still be O'Reilly's core audience, so given their political leanings they'll simply leave Fox News on to watch the RNC Convention. Not to mention, O'Reilly appears in a timeslot BEFORE any convention activities start, so it's definitely not a case of watching Barack "rather than McCain" -- in fact, the two won't overlap at all. All in all, this is just a win-win for Fox News. O'Reilly already owns that time slot and this will just increase his ratings...­not to mention most people will leave the channel on to watch the convention and then hear commentary about both Obama and McCain, thus increasing the channels ratings overall. In fact, since O'Reilly's show will air before McCain OR any other person speaks, someone could be smart enough to immediately take anything awkward that Obama's says during the course of the interview and instantly use it against him -- thus it's a one, two punch on the same night.

[HarryTheHat]

True, but the fight isn't for the ratings on the night, it's for the media coverage afterwards.

In the same way that McCain's veep announcement trod on the follow-on coverage of Obama's nomination acceptance speech, the TV news channels, radio and press will devote time to the Obama/O'Reilly interview that would otherwise have been spent covering the top-of-the-bill RNC speakers.

Seeing as how dull the Republican convention is, and the potential for lively exchanges the Obama-O'Reilly match-up has, the Obama interview could take at least an equal share of the late night/following day media coverage.

Job done.