The CEO of General Electric does more than settle on-air feuds:
In the days before President Obama’s last news conference, as the networks weighed whether to give up a chunk of their precious prime time, Rahm Emanuel went straight to the top.
Rather than calling ABC, the White House chief of staff phoned Bob Iger, chief executive of parent company Disney. Instead of contacting NBC, Emanuel went to Jeffrey Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric. He also spoke with Les Moonves, the chief executive of CBS Corp., the company spun off from Viacom.
Whether this amounted to undue pressure or plain old Chicago arm-twisting, Emanuel got results: the fourth hour of lucrative network time for his boss in six months.
I’m not complaining about the Obama administration doing this (the same way I thought that the networks should cover all the Bush events, as long he took questions). But this, along with yesterday’s story about Murdoch’s and Immelt’s involvement in the Battle Of the O’s — puts the lie to the idea that anything about tv networks is in any way insulated from the whims of the CEO parent companies. To assert, as Charlie Rose has, “I promise you, CBS News and ABC News and NBC News are not influenced by the corporations that may own those companies” is simply ludicrous.
How the hell did this happen? How is it that our public airwaves are completely controlled by large companies?