...Which is also the first night of May Sweeps!

http://www.variety.com/article/VR111792 ... =1&s=h&p=0

Dubya speech a sweeps nightmare


President Bush's last-minute decision to call a primetime news conference for tonight -- the first night of the May sweeps -- sent network schedulers scrambling late Wednesday to decide whether or not to broadcast the event.

CBS, NBC and even Fox all have key programs on Thursday night, and pre-empting or delaying those shows could cost the nets millions in ad revenue -- not to mention make a difference in the final tally.

CBS, which dominates the first two hours of the night, is loathe to mess with "Survivor" or "CSI," while NBC wouldn't want to touch "The Apprentice." Same for Fox and "The O.C.""The O.C."

No firm decisions had been made as of last night

EDIT: Info on what the networks are doing:

http://tv.zap2it.com/tveditorial/tve_ma ... 1|,00.html

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) The scheduling of a primetime White House news conference on the first night of the May sweeps period has caused several of the broadcast networks to shuffle their schedules.
The press conference -- the fourth in primetime since President Bush took office in 2001 -- is scheduled for 8 p.m. ET Thursday (April 28). All of the Big Four networks decided late Thursday afternoon to pre-empt their regular programming for news coverage, which probably won't be counted in the final Nielsen ratings sweeps.

ABC, which struggles mightily on Thursday nights and has scheduled a string of movies for sweeps, was first to announce it would go with news coverage. It's bumping the movie "Sweet Home Alabama" back one week in favor of 90 minutes of press conference coverage, followed by a 90-minute edition of "Primetime Live" in the Eastern and Central time zones. Viewers out West will see the movie "The Fast and the Furious" and a 60-minute "Primetime."

CBS, FOX and NBC will all cover the press conference from 8 to 9 p.m. The Eye network will bump its hits "Survivor: Palau" and "CSI" back an hour and drop "Without a Trace" in the eastern part of the country; out West, things will proceed as usual, with "Survivor" at 8 p.m. Pacific time, "CSI" at 9 and a "Without a Trace" rerun at 10.
FOX is pre-empting "The O.C." this week but will run two originals next Thursday (May 5), with the episode originally scheduled for this week at 8 p.m. and next week's episode at 9.

NBC, meanwhile, will boot "Joey" and "Will & Grace" (viewers out West will see repeats of both shows in their regular time periods) before returning to regular programming at 9 with "The Apprentice" and "ER." The network hasn't yet rescheduled the pre-empted comedies.

Bush is expected to discuss energy policy and his ideas for changing Social Security before taking questions from reporters.

Why the fuck would they want to broadcast it! Especially CBS, which averages well over 20 million on Thursdays.

Didn't he do this in February, too? Dubya is declaring a war on the sweeps months.

Then again, it is TV Turn-off Week...

And nothing will make me turn it off faster then Shrub :wink:

Reports are it is to announce his engagement to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. They figure if Charles and Camilla can, why not them?

BUMP

New info in the main post.

NO! GODDAMN IDIOTS! I don't get CBS, I get Survivor and CSI on Global and CTV respectively, and now both will air head to head. Great, just when I get back into CSI.