Obama ad buy would push back start of a World Series Game 6

Major League Baseball agreed Wednesday to delay the start of a World Series game by about 15 minutes to make room for a television commercial that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama plans to run Oct. 29. That would be the date for Game 6 of the baseball championship, if a sixth game is necessary. Obama's campaign this month negotiated to buy the same half-hour of prime time -- from 8 to 8:30 p.m. EDT that night -- on CBS and NBC. The campaign also approached ABC and Fox Broadcasting to purchase that half-hour on those networks, but Fox had reserved that time period for a pregame show and Game 6 of the World Series, if the baseball championship extends that long. "This is unprecedented in American political and sports history," said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC. He said the only thing that he could think of that came close was an address by President Bush about a week after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a nationally televised speech to a joint session of Congress that brought an NHL exhibition game to a halt.