I take a closer look this week at the extended pity party network TV executives have been throwing themselves in the press this year about having to, y'know, periodically surrender the public airwaves to the President of the United States in order for him to answer questions from reporters in front of a large, live national audience in primetime.

That ritual has played out in this country for decades, but suddenly with the arrival of Obama, network suits bitch and moan, as I'm sure they will in preparation for Obama's press conference scheduled for Wednesday night.

But this time the situation is a bit different, as I explain in my column:

As broadcast executives huddle to decide whether to grant the president access to the airwaves on Wednesday, which, incidentally, belong to the public and which networks use for free, it's important to point out why there's no plausible reason this time around for any of the networks to refuse to air the press conference.

And here's why: Pretty much nobody is watching the networks' prime-time programming this summer anyway.

Meaning, Obama's press conference isn't going to cause havoc with network schedules the way executives claimed previous prime-time White House events did in the winter and spring. The press conference is not going to cost the broadcast outlets big lost ratings for the simple reason that this is “The Summer People Stopped Watching Network TV,” as Gawker recently dubbed it. The networks have so few viewers tuning in this summer that, if anything, Obama's presence might actually boost the overnight Nielsen numbers.

UPDATED: CBS announced today that it will air Obama's Wednesday press conference. No word yet from the other networks. My guess is that at a minimum, Fox will snub the White House this week.