Clinton Comes Up Short on This Vote Too

NEW YORK —  NFL football superseded the political football in Washington for most of Saturday afternoon.

CBS cut short its coverage of the impeachment debate at 9 a.m. PST to switch to the New York Jet-Buffalo Bill football game. Dan Rather cut in seven times to update viewers on the votes for articles of impeachment against President Clinton.

Only one of those updates lasted more than a minute, as CBS showed the results of the first article of impeachment. Football fans missed two minutes of game action, but no scoring.

At one point, CBS went to a split screen, showing Rather talking on one side and Bill quarterback Doug Flutie scrambling for a first down on the other.

“We worked with the news division all day and made decisions as events unfolded,” CBS Sports spokeswoman LeslieAnne Wade said.

Later Saturday, Fox twice preempted the Tampa Bay-Washington game to air news from Washington. Before going to the game, Fox aired a Democratic rally on the White House lawn. Fox used a split screen during speeches by Vice President Al Gore and House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt before showing Clinton’s speech in its entirety.

“Out of respect for the president and the office of the presidency we went to a full screen for his speech,” Fox spokesman Vince Wladika said.

The network then went to the news studio for a recap of the impeachment and to James Brown in the NFL studio to update fans on the first touchdown of the game. Fox returned to the game with about six minutes left in the first quarter.

At the start of the second half, Fox aired a speech from Clinton announcing the end of the bombing of Iraq. The network returned to the football with 13:07 left in the third quarter.

This is the second time this season the Clinton-Monica Lewinsky matter has disrupted football coverage. On Aug. 17, ABC moved coverage of an exhibition game between the Cowboys and Patriots to cable partner ESPN2 to air Clinton’s speech after testifying before the grand jury.