President Jockeys for Prime Air Time

President Bush’s prime-time news conference Thursday night collided with the first night of television’s key May “sweeps” period, threatening to limit coverage of the rare event until a round of last-minute negotiations between network executives and the White House resolved the matter.

At one point in the day, only ABC had committed to airing the news conference live, as the other networks fretted they would lose an opportunity to bolster their ratings if they preempted their usual Thursday night lineups.

In the end, they all relented, but only after the White House agreed to push up Bush’s news conference from 8:30 p.m. Eastern time to 8 p.m.

The original time would have potentially forced the preemption of two hours of Thursday night shows -- a crucial time period during the sweeps month, which is used to measure program ratings and set ad rates in local markets.

Fox and NBC executives complained about the timing to White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, who notified the Washington bureau chiefs of the television networks about the president’s plans in a conference call late Wednesday.

“We mentioned to the White House that it would be difficult to schedule [live coverage of] the press conference at 8:30,” said NBC spokeswoman Rebecca Marks.

One network executive who spoke on condition of anonymity said, “For network coverage, it was a disaster” because it was the first night of May sweeps week.

CBS -- which did not want to lose a chance to run its popular “CSI” and “Survivor: Palau,” -- also balked at airing the news conference live. Last week, CSI was the No. 1 show among total viewers, with 27.0 million, and “Survivor” was the No. 6 show with 19.3 million viewers.

By late Thursday afternoon, McClellan consulted again by telephone with each network, this time individually. Most, but not all, were on board.

Concerned that Bush’s first prime-time news conference of his second term might not draw blanket television coverage, McClellan and other senior White House aides conferred, and agreed to move the news conference up by a half-hour, to 8 p.m.

Once the White House informed the networks of the time change, all the broadcast networks decided to air the news conference. The interruption did not affect prime time programs for West Coast viewers, because Bush was on the air from 5 to 6 p.m. Pacific time.

ABC, which has the lowest-rated Thursday night programming, had the least to lose. On the East Coast and in Central time zones, it postponed its movie “Sweet Home Alabama” for a week.

NBC preempted the comedies “Joey” and “Will & Grace,” and CBS bumped “Survivor” and “CSI” back an hour, losing “Without a Trace.” Fox decided to bump an episode of “The O.C.” until next week, and run “The Simple Life” at 9 p.m.

In the end, even Bush seemed acutely aware of the pressure not to disrupt the television schedules.

At 8:58 p.m. in Washington, he called on a reporter for “a final question,” adding with a smile, “I don’t want to cut into some of these TV shows that are getting ready to air -- for the sake of the economy.”

But even the famously punctual president could not finish soon enough to satisfy the networks.

By the time he finished answering the reporter’s question, all the networks but ABC had cut away to their 9 p.m. programming.

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Gold reported from Kansas City, Mo., and Chen reported from Washington. Times staff writer Scott Collins in Los Angeles contributed to this report.