No, that parade in Washington D.C. this weekend isn’t celebrating the DC Defenders’ recent conference championship victory over the St. Louis Battlehawks. It is a parade to celebrate the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army. Or, depending on who you ask, a $45 million military demonstration for President Trump to cosplay as Kim Jong Un for a day.
One would expect such a grand celebration of our country’s military might to warrant some prime viewing windows on network television. After all, your Army only turns 250 once!
Alas, that does not seem to be the case for any of the four major broadcast networks in the United States.
Instead, according to a report by Brian Steinberg in Variety, the networks will be airing their standard Saturday evening fare while the parade marches along in our nation’s capital. For ABC, that means airing a game between America’s team (the DC Defenders) and the Michigan Panthers as they battle it out for UFL Championship supremacy.
Fret not, ABC will have live streaming coverage of Trump’s demonstration of fiscal restraint on ABC News Live. And that seems to be how the other broadcast networks are handling this, too. NBC News will cover the event on its NBC News Now streaming outlet while running reality shows Destination X and Yes, Chef! over on its main broadcast channel. CBS plans to air a rerun of Elsbeth and an episode of 48 Hours during the proceedings.
Over on Fox, local listings indicate that the network will keep a rivalry game between the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox on the air. Fox News, of course, will have wall-to-wall coverage of the parade should one be so inclined. The cable news network has preempted its Saturday lineup to feature four hours of parade coverage from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET, and will have on-site coverage earlier in the day.
But if you’re the type of viewer to simply flip through your local broadcast channels on a Saturday, you might not even know the parade was happening. That might frustrate the guy who organized it all, but it seems like networks are willing to “stick to sports” this weekend and miss out on the festivities.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.