Live From the Oval Office: A Backdrop of History Fades From TV

At historic moments in the television age, past American presidents turned to the Oval Office as their stage. The current president? It was three years ago this summer that President Barack Obama gave his only two prime-time addresses from the Oval Office — the first on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the second on ending combat operations in Iraq. That ties the number for George W. Bush at a similar point in his presidency. After President Bush’s first Oval Office address, on Sept. 11, 2001, he gave just five more in eight years.

The statistics come from the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “I wouldn’t say the Oval Office address is a thing of the past,” said Martha Joynt Kumar, a presidency scholar at Towson University in Maryland. “It’s just going to be reserved for those presidents and those occasions where they feel they have to use it.” That is a sign of the times. In the second half of the 20th century, word that the president would address the nation made Americans stop and listen. For many baby boomers in particular, the speeches define the historical timeline of their lives. But in this century, the Internet revolution and advances in television technology have changed presidents, citizens and the broadcasters who traditionally connected the two. Instead of just three TV networks, Americans have myriad choices for entertainment and information, and viewership numbers for prime-time presidential addresses have fallen, to about 25 million. Faced with new competition, broadcasters resist giving airtime to presidents, so presidents give fewer addresses (and evening news conferences). When they do want to speak, they increasingly choose arrangements more comfortable to them than sitting at a desk staring at a lens — a setup that President Obama, known for his oratorical skills, likes no more than President Bush did.