Obama's ABC Special: Infected With Sickly Ratings!

So I scanned the headlines today, wondering how ABC's infomercial for ObamaCare did in the ratings last night.

Nothing. Which meant it could not have done very well, for every minor success of the Obama administration is greeted with a herald of trumpets by the media. Finally, after some searching, I came up with this:

The one-hour ABC News special "Primetime: Questions for the President: Prescription for America" (4.7 million viewers, 1.1 preliminary adults 18-49 rating) had the fewest viewers in the 10 p.m. hour. The special tied some 8 p.m. comedy repeats as the lowest-rated program on a major broadcast network.

That's not a lot of viewers for a nation with around 300 million citizens (1.5%). Guess the other 98.5% recognized state-issued propoganda when they see it. After all:

...the network consistently presented the event as part of the need to fix a "broken system." When asked, every one of the 164 hand-picked audience members said they felt that health care needed to be changed.

...The network also allowed him to dominate the program with long-winded and vague answers. Out of the 75 minutes the network dedicated over the two programs (commercials excluded), the president managed to take 60 percent of that time: 45 minutes to give 19 vague responses – not exactly the “dialogue” advertised by ABC...

'cause, as always, it's about Obama first, last and always. We're just a means to his ends, and if we don't agree, we are to be ignored or attacked (unlike, say, terrorists, who are to be respected and coddled).

And sometimes ABC, willing puppy dogs that they are, did the attacking for the president. When Aetna Insurance president Ron Williams got up to ask a question, he was ambushed by Diane Sawyer first:

"Mr. Williams, Aetna, to take one, an insurance company. We hear people all over the country people see their premiums going up 119 percent in the last several years. They see the profits of the insurance companies, the billions and billions of dollars, even in a lean year. They see profits in the billions of dollars. Is the President right – that you need to be kept honest?”

So much for the "fairness" and "balance" that ABC promised. Seems like 98.5% of Americans were too smart to take the bait. The rest are likely already on Medicaid or Medicare anyway (Primetime Live skews much older than most standard programming).

Impact on ObamaCare: Negligible.
Impact on ABC's credibility: Possibly fatal.