Channel 4's PRs must be delighted this morning - they've managed to push their dramatisation of George Bush's "assassination" into just about every newspaper and onto the front pages of the Daily Mirror and the new London Lite.
It's a classic stunt - make a TV show that you know will upset a certain type of person - and probably a lot of Americans.
Death of a President is set in October 2007 and using a mixture of archive footage, CGI and documentary techniques will portray Bush's assassination and America's reaction to it. The film will recreate the arrival of Bush in Chicago for a speech where he is confronted by a huge anti-war demo before being gunned down by a sniper.
Obviously More4 says Death of a President is a "thought-provoking" rather than "sensationalist" exercise and will portray themselves as defenders of freedom of speech against the outcry. To use the old C4 phrase (for a slightly different type of subject matter): "Porn with purpose."
The film's director, Gabriel Range, says: "Inevitably there will be people offended by the premise. But anyone who does see the film will recognise that it's not a personal attack on Bush but an oblique way of exploring the direction his foreign policies have taken us."
Obviously John Beyer of TV watchdog MediaWatch (Mary Whitehouse's successor) does not need to see it to react: "There's a lot of feeling against President Bush and this may well put ideas into people's heads."
The White House's own response was: "We won't dignify this with a response."
But there are plenty out there who will respond. They will largely be the same people who emailed the Guardian in their thousands after our acerbic TV reviewer Charlie Brooker made a jokey comment about gunning down the president.
This, from a nation where the "right to bear arms" is enshrined in the constitution - which may have been relevant when white Americans were wiping out the natives, but is not necessarily true today. I'm sure that members of Charlton Heston's National Rifle Association will raise the level of debate.
I may be wrong here, but hasn't the USA, the home of the brave and the land of the free, had more assassinated state heads than any other? How's that for democracy.
So, well done More4 for getting your story into every paper.
But is this actually proof for those at ITV - and elsewhere - who think Channel 4 is a triumph of PR and marketing over substance?
Or will it raise the level of debate about this US Presidency, its response to terrorism and whether the world today is a safer or more dangerous place to live?
