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October 29, 2008

More empty words from McCain

McCain Mocks Obama for Delaying World Series

HERSHEY, Pa. -- Sen. John McCain made a direct appeal to baseball lovers Tuesday morning while mocking his rival's decision to buy 30 minutes of television time Wednesday night for an address to the nation.

"No one will delay the World Series with an infomercial when I'm president," he said to the approval of a crowd of thousands at a stadium here.

The Fox television network agreed with a request by Major League Baseball to move the start of Game 6 of the series by 15 minutes to accommodate Obama's purchase of the television time, during which he plans to make his closing campaign argument.

In fact, McCain's own convention speech this summer forced a change in the start time of the NFL's season opener, which started an hour and a half earlier to accommodate McCain's speech.

Obama didn't delay baseball game

A Fox Broadcasting executive denied that Barack Obama's half-hour ad, scheduled for tomorrow night, forced Fox and Major League Baseball to delay the start of a World Series game.

That notion -- which had been reported repeatedly, including here, has become a Republican talking point.

"No one will delay the World Series game with an infomercial when I'm president," John McCain said today.

But the Fox account executive who negotiated the ad buy said Obama's ad isn't delaying the first pitch -- it's just replacing the pre-game show.

"Our first pitch for the world series is usually around 8:30 anyway – so we didn’t push back the game, it was really just about suspending the pre-game -- you know, Joe Buck," said the account executive, Joe Coppola. "That’s all we did."

He said World Series games this season have begun between 8:22 p.m. and 8:35 p.m.

"We didn’t push back the game at all," he said. He also said Obama had initially arranged to buy the time only if the Series were over before Game Six (in fact, a rain-delayed Game Five will continue tomorrow night), but Fox then decided to sell the campaign the time whether or not the game was played.

"By no means did they push to get us to accommodate them with Game Six," said Coppola, whom the Obama campaign suggested I call. "We’re just missing the pregame, which isn’t a big deal for us. It was a business decision."

Posted by Mike at October 29, 2008 12:03 PM

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