He never even bothered to send a formal request to the U.S. networks, his aides already knew the Spanish-language channels were going to cover it live.

Via Politico:

The White House is exasperated with the major broadcast networks – ABC, CBS and NBC — for skipping out on President Barack Obama’s Thursday primetime address on his executive actions on immigration.

“In 2006, Bush gave a 17 minute speech that was televised by all three networks that was about deploying 6000 national guard troops to the border. Obama is making a 10 minute speech that will have a vastly greater impact on the issue. And none of the networks are doing it. We can’t believe they were aggrieved that we announced this on Facebook,” a senior administration official told POLITICO.

When the president wants to make a primetime address, White House officials will reach out to the big networks like ABC, NBC, and CBS, to gauge whether they would consider running the speech live before putting in a formal request for airtime. […]

Mike Allen reports in Playbook on Thursday morning that part of the reason the networks didn’t want to air the address was because of its perceived political nature:

“There was agreement among the broadcast networks that this was overtly political. The White House has tried to make a comparison to a time that all the networks carried President Bush in prime time, also related to immigration [2006]. But that was a bipartisan announcement, and this is an overtly political move by the White House.”