Obama campaign buys prime-time TV special in October

GEORGETOWN, Ohio (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign has purchased a half-hour slot on prime-time television on October 29, six days before the U.S. election, a campaign official said on Thursday.

The campaign has deals with CBS and NBC to run the special, while Fox will also air it if the network is not broadcasting a baseball World Series game that day, Obama senior adviser Linda Douglass said.

She said the campaign was negotiating with other networks to run the half-hour program, but declined to say how much the total budget was for the purchases.

Obama, who faces Republican John McCain in the November 4 election, has outstripped his rival in fundraising, bolstered by his decision not to take public funds and thereby avoiding federal spending limits.

Obama, who has pledged to make the current economic crisis a central theme of his campaign, declined to say if the date of his television special -- the 79th anniversary of the catastrophic 1929 stock market crash -- was significant.

"We're going to be talking about it tomorrow," he said in response to a reporter's question.

(Reporting by Caren Bohan, editing by Andrew Quinn)