The Hollywood Reporter goes big today with a long article about how entertainment execs at the nets hate pre-empting their schedules for Obama's primetime pressers. About how the nets are losing millions of dollars in ad revenue, although actually, as the HR explains, the money's not actually lost, those commercials pre-empted by the press conference are just shifted to other times slots. But still.

The whole thing's a hoot and I suggest you go read it for real insight to our media culture and TV execs who make their living using the public airwaves for free. (Oops, the HR article forgot to mention that nugget.)

Here's the headline:

Obama drama: Nets take a stand against primetime pre-emptions

The funny thing is, in the article nobody at the nets takes a stand. They just whine off the record. And oh, what a vintage whine it is [emphasis added]:

“We reluctantly went along with his latest request,” one network executive said, “but the next one better involve something really important to the American people, or the networks are going to tell the White House to buzz off.”

We already noted this fact but will repeat it here because those deep thinkers at network TV prefer repetition. The complaint is that Obama's last press conference had no news; that it didn't “involve something really important to the American people.” Except that the day of Obama's presser the press itself was doing its best to whip up hysteria about a possible swine flu pandemic, and the primetime Q&A offered the president his first chance to truly address the nation about the health scare.

But yeah, other than that, other than a potentially deadly disease sweeping the nation (at least that's how the press hyped it,) there really wasn't anything at Obama's last press conference that was “important to the American people.”