The makers of the upcoming CBS series Under the Dome figured they could add a splash of verisimilitude to their drama by dropping in audio of President Barack Obama.
The network is now having second thoughts, and CBS editors have trimmed the material from the final broadcast.
The show, based on a Stephen King novel, features a small town separated from the rest of the world by the sudden appearance of a strange, and impregnable, dome.
In the scene, which comes at the end of the first hour, Obama is heard amid a slew of fake reports talking about what is going in the town. The audio of the president is actually from his remarks following Hurricane Sandy when he said the nation feels “profoundly for all the families whose lives have been upended.
One could guess at a political rationale for the edit. After all, Obama’s popularity is shrinking with every scandal. The network’s reason for the change makes sense, although it begs the question why they didn’t consider it in the first place.
While use of audio from actual news events for a fictional TV show is not unusual, the network and producer Amblin Television decided that having these remarks from a real tragedy inserted in an entertainment show was inappropriate.
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