Obama on Fox Before McCain's Speech

NYT: Before Senator John McCain delivers his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday, Senator Barack Obama will make a marquee appearance of his own.

Call it counter-intuitive. He will appear on “The O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News Channel.

For Mr. Obama, it will be the first time in his presidential candidacy that he’s on Bill O’Reilly’s prime-time program. The appearance is intended to put Mr. Obama before a conservative audience, one week after drawing 40 million TV viewers at his own acceptance speech.

The WaPo says Obama met with Fox's chief:

At a secret meeting with Barack Obama three months ago, Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes says, he tried to clear the air with the Democratic senator by saying that his organization was determined to be fair but would not be "in the tank" for Obama's campaign.
During the sit-down in a Waldorf-Astoria hotel suite in Manhattan that included Rupert Murdoch, the network's owner, Obama expressed concern about the way Fox was covering him. "I just wanted to know if I'm going to get a fair shake from Fox News Channel," Ailes recalled him saying.

"Senator, you're the one who boycotted us," Ailes says he replied. "We're not the ones who boycotted you. Nor did we retaliate for your boycott."

Obama to Appear on the Dreaded Fox

chris wallace did have an iota of smarts when he criticized fox and friends hosts recently for being a bunch of idiots-- they had a two hour obama slam fest.

It will be Obama's only appearance on a public affairs show, and comes five days after his defeat in the Pennsylvania primary. Wallace said Obama will be the only guest on the show, which will probably also have a segment with the regular panel.

Wallace, whose show airs on Fox Broadcasting stations coast to coast as well as Fox News Channel, started the feature in early March after multiple tries to get the Illinois senator on the program. But 772 days refers to how much time had elapsed since the 2006 Gridiron Dinner, when Obama first told Wallace that he would appear on the show. The "Obama Watch" had rankled the campaign, but Wallace said it wasn't just that that brought the candidate to the program.

"They realized they've got a problem after Pennsylvania," Wallace told the Hollywood Reporter. "In the end, they do it for their own reasons, not ours. But they realized he needs to be able to reach out to working-class, blue-collar Democrats, moderate to conservative, and that's our target audience."