President Bush is preempting a movie-themed “American Idol” tonight to provide a little drama of his own.
Fox announced yesterday it is postponing the hugely popular reality show to air Bush’s third prime-time news conference of his presidency.
The news session is scheduled for 8:30, which would have landed it in the middle of the hour-long performance show. Instead, Fox will move tonight’s “American Idol” episode to tomorrow night at 8. The singing competition for this week, billed as “movie-theme night” and adding director Quentin Tarantino as a guest judge, will still be taped tonight in Hollywood. Fox will bookend the president’s news conference, scheduled to last about an hour, with two repeats of “That ’70s Show.’ ”
The “American Idol” results show, originally scheduled to air live tomorrow at 8:30 p.m. will move to Thursday at 8 p.m. It will also be expanded to an hour, setting up a ratings showdown with CBS’s “Survivor: All-Stars” and two “Friends” repeats.
What was Karl Rove thinking, bumping “American Idol”? Middle America will be outraged. It might be mildly entertaining to have Simon Crowell, Paula Abdul, and Randy Jackson critique the press conference rather than having a Democratic response.
