Media World: Networks will cheer Fox snub of Obama

As a card-carrying, Obama-supporting member of the mainstream media, I rolled my eyes when I learned that Fox will air its new crime drama "Lie to Me" tonight instead of President Barack Obama's news conference discussing his first 100 days in office. But broadcasters who loathe the politics of Rupert Murdoch's media empire are probably wishing that they had the guts to turn down the White House.

The days of media companies agreeing to show presidential news conferences over their flagship networks are probably coming to an end. Slowly but surely, the networks are off-loading their labor-intensive coverage of events such as political conventions to cable networks. There is too much money to be made in selling advertising on prime time programs to sacrifice time for presidential news conferences. I bet the networks would gladly exile the State of the Union address to the smaller channels if they could get away with it.