The Obama show. Wednesday at 9, on everychannel

This Wednesday, January 27th, President Obama will give his first State of the Union. There has been much drama over when the State of the Union would be. Much to the delight of "Lost" fans, Obama will not be preempting the season premier, on February 2nd, as first feared. The reason for a possible February date was because Obama's camp was thought to have wanted to wait to give the big speech until after the vote on health care reform.

Obama's first speech comes at a very odd time in American history. A world disaster in Haiti, unemployment numbers are on the rise, again, in New York State, a major democratic defeat in Massachusetts, and now Obama is starting to "fight" back. Obama and his team have said that their message isn't getting out, it's getting cluttered in the day's news, but will a possibly hour-long speech be able to grab Americans attention, so Obama can spread his message?

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Past State of the Union speeches have been as long as an hour and 28 minutes, to just under 30; as depicted on the American Presidency Project's website, here. All of the networks and cable channels will be covering the speech and rebuttal live starting at 9pm est this Wednesday.


CBS, ABC and FOX must be hoping Obama's speech and the Republican response will be under 90 minutes -and it should be. If the Obama administration wants to properly inform people of his administration's goals, initiatives, etc he must keep it "short." Interestingly, NBC has devoted 2 hours 9-11pm to Obama's State of the State. (Maybe it will give local 11pm newscasts a better lead-in then Leno?)

I know I'll be watching, will you?