No Obama Oath for Las Vegas CNN Viewers

In front of an estimated crowd of 4 million people in Washington, D.C., Barack Obama took the oath to become the 44th president of the United States. However, many Las Vegas residents didn't get to see the inaugural oath if they were tuned in to the local CNN channel via Cox Cable.

With their DVRs and Tivo units set to record the event, Las Vegas locals who turned to the news channel CNN for coverage of the President's inauguration found themselves left out and sorely disappointed on Tuesday, January 20th. Many Americans who were tuned into other news broadcasts such as CNBC and FOX News witnessed live television coverage of the historic moment of Obama's inauguration as the first African-American president in history.

As Obama placed his hand on the Bible and take the presidential oath, Las Vegas local residents watched in anticipation, but the local CNN broadcast had left the building, with the live feed switched over to a pre-recorded local news broadcast of promotional news clips which is called the Local Edition. The Local Edition started its interruption after the HLN broadcast announced in text that some cable affiliates would rejoin the broadcast after a local insert.

The local insert was followed by a commercial break, and the length of the interruption ended up cutting out the moving rendition of "Our Country, 'Tis of Thee" by Aretha Franklin. The uninvited interruption cost local viewers the inaugural oaths as well. The commercial break ended just in time for viewers to witness Time columnist Joel Stein talking about his Obama obsession while Biden left the stage following his inaugural swear-in.

There is some speculation as to the omission of the inauguration being intentional on the part of the often-conservative CNN, but most believe the local broadcast's omission of the Presidential and Vice Presidential oaths was simply an inept and poorly timed broadcasting error.

After the television broadcast failed to air live coverage of the inaugural oath in favor of their local news promotional clips and commercial sponsors, CNN resumed their live coverage for all of Obama's inaugural speech.

However, many Las Vegas residents are rather angry about the omission of the inaugural oath on the Las Vegas version of the CNN broadcast, as the oath was, for many, part of the emotional and spiritual experience of the multiple millions of people who anticipated Obama's long-awaited inauguration. Some wonder why the station did not cut back to the inauguration when they realized that they were accidentally omitting one of the biggest Presidential and Vice-Presidential inauguration ceremonies in American history, and certainly the largest in the lifetime of the viewers who tuned in to CNN's HLN broadcast to catch the historic moment.

CNN was contacted for comment through the form on their website, requesting a comment regarding the reason for their allowing the omission of the inaugural oath in favor of the Local Edition and commercials on Cox cable, but were unable to be reached prior to publication.