White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer laughed as CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked him about the “snub” from the broadcast networks, who chose not to air President Obama’s address on immigration. Pfeiffer’s response was blunt: “this is 2014. We’re in a digital age.” In short, Pfeiffer was saying, having the networks break in to sweeps programming was just not essential to getting out the message:
It’s important to understand, this is 2014, you have to take a different approach to communications. We picked the time and place of this address knowing it was unlikely the networks would break away from the dramas and comedies they were showing in sweeps week, because this is the time when people would be most likely to be watching it on their smartphones, laptops and tablets.
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Pfeiffer said a White House teaser video released on Facebook was watched by more than three million people ahead of the prime time speech.