On Thursday, Obama campaign officials revealed that the presidential nominee had clinched deals with both the CBS and the NBC television networks to broadcast a thirty minute program about his candidacy, which is scheduled to air Wednesday, October 29.

Moreover, the announcement also informed that discussions about striking similar deals with ABC and Fox were being conducted.

This makes Barack Obama the first candidate for president of the United States in sixteen years to have managed to buy network primetime for promoting his campaign.

The Democrat’s program is set to be broadcast at 8 p.m., in CBS’s „The New Adventures of Old Christine” time slot, also taking out a half an hour of NBC’s „Knight Rider.”

Two things remain yet to be disclosed: the program’s content and the price Obama paid for the half hour. Between 8 and 8.30 p.m., an ad alone is said to cost about $1 million and rumor has it that, although Obama has the whole time-frame, he has only been requested to pay the price of a commercial.

GMMB of Washington, D.C., which is Barack Obama’s campaign ad buyer, tried to score the candidate the primetime half-hour on October 30, November 2 or November 3 (Thursday, Sunday or Monday), but due to NFL football games on NBC, the network was not willing to meet his demands.

The program will air less than a week before the United States presidential elections, which are to take place on November 4, 2008. Barack Obama’s counter-candidate is GOP’s nominee John McCain.