Obama's Numbers Tank, Ratings-Wise

The President Obama Show scored a series low Wednesday but, even so, managed to beat the whacking of Matt the Hat on "American Idol" the same night.

The "Been in Office 100 Days" episode of Obama's series of prime-time appearances, which aired at 8 p.m., officially clocked 28.8 million viewers, according to Nielsen. Which, to be perfectly accurate, was clocking only 10 of the networks to carry Obama's news conference -- not including PBS, Fox Business Network and C-SPAN in its tally, for instance. That's because, Nielsen has said in the past, C-SPAN carries no advertising, PBS can't give it reliable stats and newish FBN isn't yet rated by Nielsen. No comment, in case you're wondering what is our response to those explanations.

Anyway, "American Idol," in which Americans voted to remove Matt Giraud from the Idol running -- for the second time -- attracted about 22.4 million fans, which was that franchise's smallest Wednesday crowd in four years.

Even so, the president's numbers were nothing to rave about, being his smallest prime-time TV crowd by a wide margin.

According to Nielsen -- which, again, does not include every network that has carried the Obama series -- his March 24 news conference had at least 40.4 million viewers. His Feb. 9 news conference copped 49.5 million.

And his Feb. 24 special, a.k.a. Address to Joint Session of Congress, attracted a whopping 52.4 million viewers.

Wednesday's news conference scored 45 percent fewer fans than that speech. Compared with his most recent appearance -- that March news conference -- Obama's average is down 29 percent. Any other series, a plunge like that would have network suits sending stern memos calling for the addition of a wacky next-door neighbor to the show. Or at least an adorable puppy. Oh wait . . . .

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Broadcasters had not been entirely happy about the fourth prime-time appearance of Obamavision in three months, noting that it would cost the broadcast TV industry about $10 million to turn over the hour to Obama. The White House had requested the time Wednesday, which marked Obama's 100th day in office, so it could take control of the inevitable first-100-days-in-office news-cycle blather.

Among the series to get preempted by Obama was ABC's new workplace comedy "Better Off Ted" -- set at the morally challenged mega-corporation Veridian Dynamics. To mark the occasion, the show's producers made a Veridian Dynamics public service announcement about Obama's news conference:

President Obama decides to address the nation, and Veridian Dynamics suffers. Why? Because we own innocent television networks that are forced to provide "el jefe" free airtime. Free time to talk about stuff too complicated for television viewers to understand anyway. We love our country. But why should we have to do anything to help it? We pay taxes! Sometimes. We know companies that don't even do that (cough-GE)! Veridian Dynamics: When presidents talk, Americans get hurt.

This is the second time "Better Off Ted" has gotten whacked by the president. Last time he called for prime-time, um, time, on March 24, Fox wound up moving "American Idol" into a time slot when ABC was airing "Ted." The results weren't pretty.