A prime time address from the president, spending an hour or so reiterating his position, is certain to move the numbers on health care.

Presuming, of course, people watch:

In a continued push for congressional support of health care reform President Obama held his fourth prime time press conference on Wednesday July 22, 2009. The conference was carried live from 8:00PM to approximately 9:00PM on 11 networks. The sum of average audience for those networks was 24,682,519 viewers and had a combined household rating of 16.3. The networks carrying the press conference were ABC, CBS, NBC, Univision*, Telemundo*, BBC-A, BET, CNBC, CNN, FOX News Channel, and MSNBC.
Viewing to last night’s press conference was down 14% from his April 29 press conference and down 50% from his first primetime conference on February 9.

UPDATE: The lead paragraph of tomorrow morning’s story:

President Obama confronted increasing doubts about the impact of widespread changes to the health-care system, seeking to assure middle-class Americans on Wednesday that the landmark legislation he envisions would improve their quality of life and is essential to curing the nation’s economic ills.
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“This is not just about 47 million Americans who have no health insurance,” he said in a prime-time televised… “Reform is about every American who has ever feared that they may lose their coverage.”

Actually, that’s from coverage of the news conference back on July 22.