Jim Ressler has a vague recollection of watching Lyndon Johnson deliver the commencement speech at Michigan Stadium in 1964. He was 5, the day was somewhat overcast and he was bored out of his mind.

Ressler took his wife and children to see Bill Clinton’s commencement speech at Michigan three years ago, and when President Barack Obama addresses graduates Saturday, Ressler will be on site again, as producer for the Big Ten Network’s first live telecast of non-sports-related programming.

“This is all sort of by accident for me,” Ressler said Friday from the network’s mobile TV unit parked outside the stadium. “It’s not a hobby of mine. I never dreamed I would have to bring my football truck here.”

Big Ten Network president Mark Silverman said Saturday’s broadcast, which begins at 10:30 a.m. and runs until the last graduate gets his diploma, is the “highest-profile event that we’re putting on other than sports.” The network is using eight high-definition cameras to film the day, about what it uses for its No. 1 football game on fall Saturdays, and will air a taped interview with Michigan president Mary Sue Coleman and a live interview with athletic director Dave Brandon.

Fox2 anchorman Huel Perkins is hosting the show.

“We’re covering this like it’s a big-time event,” Silverman said. “What we’re striving for is that we’re getting a lot more attention than we would normally be getting this time of year. After basketball and football season, sometimes the network, it fades a bit in the minds of our viewers and to be able to give viewers another chance to remember, ‘Oh, they have the Big Ten Network.’

“It’s kind of a unique chance for us to have that opportunity that normally we wouldn’t be able to have.”

Silverman said the network made plans to broadcast the ceremony as soon as it learned of Obama’s appearance about eight weeks ago.

There were security and other hoops to jump through. On Thursday, the White House turned down the network’s request for an interview with Obama and special assistant Eugene Kang, a Michigan graduate who’s in the president’s traveling party, and the air space above Michigan Stadium is off limits so the network had to scrap plans for aerial coverage.

Obama’s 20-minute address will begin somewhere around 11:30 a.m., after he gets his honorary degree, and the broadcast also includes speeches by Coleman and Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, and the commissioning of Michigan’s Army R.O.T.C. cadets by Obama.

Ressler, who’s produced 60 or so telecasts for the Big Ten Network since its inception in 2007, said this is one he’ll never forget. Silverman said he hopes viewers walk away with the same feeling, too.

“It’s great to have a network that you can put it on and have it make sense,” he said. “Being a branded Big Ten network, it just kind of fits. I don’t think it would fit if a more traditional sports network aired it. It would seem to be a bit out of place. But we don’t feel that. We feel like it’s a really good fit for what we’re trying to do.”

Dave Birkett covers University of Michigan football for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached by phone at 734-623-2552 or by e-mail at davidbirkett@annarbor.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.