Our Great National Parks, a docuseries narrated by President Barack Obama, premieres on Netflix April 13. There are five episodes. Obama executive produces as well. 

The limited series touches upon nature conservation. Spanning five continents, each episode tells the story of a national park through the lives of the animals that reside there. Obama ventures to “the waters of Monterey Bay, California, to the bright red soil of Kenya’s Tsavo National Park, the lush rainforests of Indonesia’s Gunung Leuser National Park, the majestic terrain of Chilean Patagonia, and more,” according to Netflix.

“Join me as we explore the wonders and secrets of some of the most extraordinary national parks on the planet,” Obama says in the series.

This series is a Wild Space production in association with Higher Ground Productions and Freeborne Media. Barack and Michelle Obama launched Higher Ground. Its productions include American Factory, Crip Camp and Becoming. Priya Swaminathan and Tonia Davis are among the Higher Ground programming executives. 

Last year, Obama said Higher Ground was set up “to tell great stories.”

“From science fiction to the beauty of our natural world to the relationships that define us, Higher Ground continues to strive for fresh perspectives, compelling characters, and a healthy dose of inspiration,” he added. “We couldn’t be more proud to team up with the brilliant artists behind each of these stories. Each of them has something important to say.” ■

HBO has set an Aug. 3 premiere date for its documentary series Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union, the network said Wednesday.

The series, directed by Peter Kunhardt, follows the historic Obama presidency  and reflects on the country’s past and present national identity, the network said. 

The series features interviews from such political and celebrity personalities as Jelani Cobb; John Lewis; David Axelrod; Rev. Alvin Love; Michael Eric Dyson; Laura Washington; Rev. Jeremiah Wright; Rev. Al Sharpton; Cornel West; Jesse Jackson; Ta-Nehisi Coates; Sherrilyn Ifill; Valerie Jarrett; Henry Louis Gates Jr., and  Keegan-Michael Key. 

CNN topped television’s coverage of Wednesday’s Inauguration of President Joe Biden as nearly 40 million viewers across several broadcast and cable networks viewed the festivities.

CNN averaged 9.9 million viewers from 11:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m., topping ABC’s 7.6 million viewers and NBC’s 6.8 million watchers, according to Nielsen. MSNBC (6.5 million), CBS (6 million) and Fox News (2.7 million) rounded out the list. 

Overall, 39.5 million viewers tuned in to see Biden’s swearing in ceremony, up from the 38 million viewers who tuned into Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017. Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration averaged 50.6 million viewers, according to Nielsen.

Also Read: Communications Industry Extends Congratulations to President Biden

CNN was also the most watched network during the broader 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. period, averaging 7.7 million viewers, topping ABC with 5.3 million viewers and MSNBC with 5.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen. The 29.2 million total viewers for the time period across the six networks was up from the 26.8 million viewers for the 2017 inauguration but down from 2009 (34.3 million).

Former President Barack Obama will appear on the latest edition of HBO's sports talk show series The Shop: Uninterrupted, the network said Tuesday.

Obama will appear with series producers LeBron James and Maverick Carter on the Oct. 30 episode of the series, which offers unfiltered conversation and debate with athletes, celebrities and politicians, said the network. 

HBO will make the episode available to non-HBO subscribers from Oct. 31 to Nov. 28  
at www.HBO.com, www.YouTube.com/HBO, www.HBOMax.com and www.YouTube.com/HBOMax, said the network. 

“Two years ago, LeBron and Maverick created a unique forum with The Shop" said Nina Rosenstein, Executive Vice President, HBO Programming in a statement. “Their conversation with President Obama is candid, compelling and urgently relevant.”

Barack Obama endorsed his former VP, Joe Biden, in a video posted on YouTube Tuesday that also took aim at Republicans and promoted a progressive agenda he said was the most progressive of any major party nominee in history. He also suggested Biden could better handle a pandemic.

The former President called on Americans to rise up in a great awakening "against a politics that too often has been characterized by corruption, carelessness, self-dealing, disinformation, ignorance and just plain meanness." 

Related: Trump Lashes Out at Media, Fauci

He said that would take Americans of all political stripes. 

Obama was widely expected to make the endorsement after Bernie Sanders bowed out of the race and then gave his full support to Biden Monday (April 13). 

After providing a COVID-19 pep talk calling for unit and community, Obama said picking Biden had been one of the best decisions he had ever made. He said leadership belongs in the White House, not just in the governor's and mayor's office, an obvious response to the current President's criticism of local officials getting together to plan for re-opening the economy when possible.

He said Biden had rescued the auto industry and saved millions of jobs. He also suggested Biden would be a good choice in leadership during a time of pandemic. "Joe helped me manage H1N1 and help keep the Ebola epidemic from becoming the type of pandemic we're seeing now." He was perhaps anticipating the "don't change horses in midstream" argument some Republicans might offer up for keeping Trump in office.

He said Biden would surround himself with experts who "actually know how to run the government" and work with our allies "and always put the American people's interests above their own. Obama left it to the viewer to draw whatever distinctions they wanted with the current President. 

Obama also took some time to praise Sanders for trying to make America "a fairer, more just, more equitable society." He said Sanders ideas would be "critical to moving America in a direction of progress and hope." 

He also trumpeted an expansive progressive agenda, sounding almost more like a presidential candidate than a former President. He said Republicans aren't interested in progress, but power, and said they had "denied the science of pandemics" as they had climate change. 

He also said the Republicans had a "propaganda network with little regard for the truth." But he also said pandemics have a way of cutting through the noise and spin and reminded the American people that good government and science and facts matter and "the rule of law" matters. 

President Donald Trump has accused former President Barack Obama of tapping his phones at Trump Tower before the election. He tweeted a series of accusations Saturday morning (March 4) without citing any evidence, causing news outlets to scramble to report the shocking claim.

"Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!," the President tweeted early Saturday morning, followed by "Is it legal for a sitting President to be ‘wire tapping’ a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!" and "I'd bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!" and "How low has President Obama gone to tapp [SIC] my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!"

CNN headlined its story on the rant ""Trump's Baseless Wiretap Claim," citing a former senior government official denying there was such an investigation.

The Washington Post, which knows a little something about Nixon and Watergate, said it appeared the President might have been responding to a story on conservative site Breitbart.com about conservative radio host Mark Levin and his call for an investigation into what he alleged were Obama's "silent coup" against Trump.

Principal Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on ABC’s This Week Sunday (March 5): “If this [wiretapping] happened, if this is accurate, this is the biggest overreach and the biggest scandal.”

"Let’s have an investigation," she said. "If they're going to investigate Russia ties, let's include this as part of it and so that's what we're asking. . . . . If this happened, if this is accurate, this is the biggest overreach and the biggest scandal," said Huckabee, according to the White House, which included her quote as part of a "highlights from Sunday's Shows" e-mail to reporters.

The President shifted gears following those Tweets with one focused on The Apprentice, the NBC show he used to host, and the exit of current host Arnold Schwarzenegger, saying: "Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't voluntarily leaving the Apprentice, he was fired by his bad (pathetic) ratings, not by me. Sad end to great show."

Schwarzenegger had cited Trump’s continued association with the NBC show as the reason it failed, saying people were boycotting the show as a result.

The Roman Emperor Nero Claudius Caesar, according to folklore, sang and played the lyre while Rome was burning in 64 A.D. It is an image that has lived on through the ages, symbolizing a troubled leader dallying during times of immediate crisis.

Although President Obama is no Nero, he now can be cited for focusing on little things while a larger, unsecure world looms outside.

History, therefore, may not be so kind to Obama when it reviews his decision to fiddle with regulatory minutiae when there is so much mayhem in the world.  Just a few days ago, the president inserted himself into a proceeding at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to "open up set top boxes to competition." Moreover, Obama directed every federal agency to report back to him on their programs to promote competition in the marketplace.

Just to be clear, at a time when ISIS is ascendant, when terror is rampant, when North Korea is batty and Russia is flexing, when crime rocks our cities, when the economy is slowing and when race relations are at their lowest, the president has time to be concerned about America’s set-top boxes?

Cable set-top boxes.  Really?  Come on, man.

The president’s action presents a host of troubling issues that are bigger than the act itself. 

First, he is interfering in the decision of an independent federal agency, which might be seen as contrary to the separation of powers.  Second, he is seeking to influence the commercial market under the banner of advancing competition. Third, and most curiously, doesn't Mr. Obama have more presidential things to do than to worry about the cost of our cable set-top boxes?  I mean, isn't there a rogue terrorist, a loose nuke, or a cop-killer on the run?  What about America’s place in the world, at the very least?

Of course, it is perfectly reasonable and lawful for the president to have a position on a matter of public policy. 

The problem comes when he directs a supposedly independent federal agency — the FCC — to deliver a specific outcome.  In this instance, it is a position favored by technology darlings who have found regular refuge in the Eisenhower (Old) Executive Office Building under the Obama Administration. It also is a decision with dramatic financial and commercial implications shifting fortunes of multi-billion dollar private industry, where the government has little business regulating. Beyond thumb on the scale, this is tap-dancing on the scale.

“We are a government of laws, not of men,” advised John Adams in 1774.  Sadly, President Obama has scorned over two hundred years of American tradition by unilaterally dictating a matter rightfully left to the legislative and regulatory process. After all, monarchical deliberations were eschewed from the beginning of the republic and they have not found favor since.

In a series of executive branch actions, the president decreed that the federal government was now in the business of affirmatively creating competition through its policies.  He has directed all federal agencies to report back to him on what measures they are taking to create competition.

While competition is a great and desirable thing, it is best left to the markets and private sector to determine, rather than the federal government.  The government's role is to make sure that market forces are not stifling competition; its role is not to artificially create competition through regulation.  This is in itself, anti-competitive.

This is not the first time Mr. Obama has veered from his constitutional lane, especially on matters involving our nation’s communications services.  The president twisted the arm of chairman Tom Wheeler in 2015, forcing him into an about-face on Title II regulation of the Internet. Given the seeming popularity of that decision, Obama has now doubled down on his influence over the FCC, all but rubber stamping the FCC’s intent to save consumers from set-top box tyranny.

Ironically, both of these decisions have a good chance of being reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit or Congress, or both.

Beyond the procedural posturing that may occur over this action, there is a bigger principle at play.  At a time when the nation’s collective attention is focused on hotly contested presidential primaries, the president has developed a case of myopia. 

He is collecting a lot of little marbles while the big rocks remain.

With a scant nine months left in his presidency, Obama is fiddling with our set-top boxes while the world around him is burning.

Adonis Hoffman is chairman of Business in the Public Interest and adjunct professor of communication, culture & technology at Georgetown University.  He is the author ofDoing Good — the New Rules of Corporate Responsibility, Conscience and Character.

WASHINGTON — Consumer Technology Association president Gary Shapiro says there are three key things he thinks the tech sector would like to hear from the President in his last State of the Union speech Tuesday (Jan. 12), including encouraging “disruptive innovation.”

In a blog post, Shapiro suggested that the federal regulatory climate is currently chilly to such innovation. He said the climate "piles one employer mandate atop another," including higher overtime pay that he says insures that startups won't be able to hire new talent.

In addition to asking President Obama to repeal those new Department of Labor pay thresholds, Shapiro called for passage of patent legislation targeting so-called "trolls" who are draining $1.5 billion a week from the economy in needless litigation or in court settlements, he said.

Shapiro also asked Obama keep pushing for passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a historic Pacific Rim trade agreement with 11 other countries that CTA as well as TV and film producers have lobbied for as a way to expand trade and access to Asia-Pacific markets.

"Implementing new trade and patent reform policies while supporting new business models would help ferment President Obama’s pro-innovation legacy and would help the tech economy thrive," Shapiro said.

Cable stocks continued to regain the ground they lost in the wake of President Obama’s message to move closer toward Title II regulation of broadband, with shares of all the major cable operators rising in Wednesday trading.

The stocks took a beating on Monday after the President said in a video message that he would prefer the Federal Communications Commission move closer to Title II regulation to ensure an open Internet. That news sent cable stocks into a tailspin – shares of the top MSOs were down between 3% and 6% for the day – as investors feared more onerous regulation would stifle growth.

The stocks fared better on Tuesday, with Comcast and Charter posting tiny gains (1 cent and six cents per share, respectively) while other stocks in the space tempered their losses.

On Wednesday, the sector began its long climb back, with Comcast, Charter, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision Systems and Liberty Broadband all reporting increases.

Liberty Broadband, the tracking stock that includes Liberty Media’s 26% interest in Charter Communications, was the big gainer for the day, rising as much as 4% in earlier trading before closing at $47.15 each, up 3.2% ($1.46 per share). Liberty Broadband was followed closely by Time Warner Cable, up as much as 3% before settling to close at $136.38 (up 1.2% or $1.60 each), Charter Communications, up 2.4% before closing at $149.01 (a 1.6% increase) and Comcast, up 2% before closing at $53.60 per share, a gain of 1.2%. Rounding out the sector was Cablevision Systems, which rose as high as 1% (up 14 cents each) to $18.23 before closing at $18.15, up 0.3% or 6 cents each.