A segment on Thursday’s episode of the Daily Show entitled, “Barack’s Millions,” featured a story on the half-hour $3 million infomercial that Barack Obama aired on seven different television networks during primetime Wednesday night.
The infomercial included four examples of middle-class Americans who have fallen on hard times financially and laid out Obama’s plans for his presidency that included a better health care plan, a better approach to foreign affairs, and better tax plans that would help each of these struggling citizens and many more like them across the country.
The infomercial appeared on three broadcast channels (CBS, NBC, FOX), three cable networks (BET, MSNBC, TV One), and Univision – a spanish-language channel – and was seen by 33.55 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.
“I was shocked by the number Obama was able to draw,” said Chairman of CBS Leslie Moonves, to Bill Carter of the New York Times. “It’s just a stunning number.”
The last presidential campaign to attempt such on-air programming was Ross Perot in 1996 when he bought a half-hour special on three networks. The ratings for this fell short of Obama’s infomerical with only 22.7 million people tuning in, according to an article in the New York Times.
After the infomercial aired, Senator John McCain’s campaign released a statement that read, “As anyone who has bought anything from an infomercial knows, the sales-job is always better than the product. Buyer beware,” according to the Caucus Blog on the New York Times website.
