Posted on 11/13/2014 11:08:40 AM PST by SoFloFreeper
In local TV, nobody likes a landslide. Close races are more intriguing to cover for the newsroom, and they are far, far more lucrative for the sales department. An analysis by the Cincinnati Business Courier concludes the runaway win on Election Night by Ohio Governor John Kasich cost two Scripps stations, Cleveland ABC affiliate WEWS and Cincinnati ABC affiliate WCPO $10 million in lost revenue:
“Political spending is about the footprint and the competitiveness of each individual race,” Scripps CFO Tim Wesolowski said during a conference call for Scripps executives to talk to investors and analysts about the company’s third-quarter earnings. (Some) races that we thought would be competitive never materialized. The best example of that was a lack of a competitive gubernatorial race in Ohio.”
Kasich’s wide early lead likely cost Scripps TV stations in Cleveland and Cincinnati more than $10 million, Wesolowski said.
(Excerpt) Read more at mediabistro.com ...
Someone hold me.
Queue the Prissy Chrissy pouting with his armed folded on election night photo.
Just goes to show one shouldn’t count their chickens before they (the chickens) come home to roost.
It’s not the cash cow it may appear to be - the rates for political ads must be the lowest rates a radio or TV station sells advertising at.....or at least it used to be that way.
So it can be a big top line number, but these ads may have taken air time that would have been sold at a higher rate to a normal advertiser. And then there’s the fact that normal advertisers avoid air time around elections because they know everybody is sick of political ads.
So its a revenue stream, but it has a down side.
Just another reason to dislike my local news media. Most all were reporting Greg Orman up by 1 point when in reality, Pat Roberts won by 10 points. That’s an 11 point swing and nowhere close to what they were reporting.
CGato
It's like when the libs say a tax cut "costs" the government money...
And let’s not forget their other motive - which is to shape public opinion to fit their liberal agenda. Gives them two reasons to claim there’s a close race when in fact the lib is getting destroyed.
Yes, political ads are supposed to be at the lowest ad rate, but consider the number of times these ads run in the last month of the campaign. They push out ads from steady customers of radio/TV outlets...
Is he implying they didn’t accept ads from the opposition, for the sole purpose of supporting their candidates?
I’d like to see the TV and radios stations have to do the campaign ads as a free “public service”. Maybe then we wouldn’t see and/or hear so many of the dang things.
money you never got is not lost money
I just love a happy ending!
When a race is a forgone conclusion, the winner doesn't need to advertise, and the loser can't get the money to advertise.
That remains true for 'early buys' of media by direct candidate and political party purchases. As well the various media outlets are only required to allocate a percentage of their available space for the discounts although they can choose to do more as they see fit.
However, the low-cost rates do not apply for the indirect advocacy groups like PACs and 501 groups, they generally pay close to normal pricing. Additionally, 'emergency' time buys (gaffe responses) and buys after the percentage allocation has been committed will go for higher rates than the discounted.
The latter rule was one of the numerous obstacles for Romney in 2012. Since Obama was the undisputed Democrat candidate, he could immediately spend general election funds throughout the summer to attack Romney and make the 'early buys' that would exhaust the discount space availability. When Romney was finally confirmed as the GOP candidate at the Convention in September, he was 3 months behind the Obama campaign AND had to spend more for the same ad space in the markets that were considered competitive. This is the reason that you will probably never see another late-summer political convention. They all will be moved to late May and June.
I can’t understand how this is true. Federal law require that stations sell their ad time at the lowest-cost rates listed. If the stations didn’t sell their time to the candidates, then they were able to sell it at prevailing rates to others. Am I being asked to believe that there were mostly PSA’s and station ID’s on during programming breaks, instead of profitable business ads?
Our nation has been very carefully by the media to maintain a almost exactly split electorate for exactly this reason. All the moaning you hear about the expense of campaigns is nothing but bull. Elections are the only thing that keeps many media markets afloat.
Thanks for the clarification - on the PACS- and as I understand it, some of the Mitt PACS gladly paid the higher rate because they were working off a commission of the buy (how agencies get paid) - so if they bought a million, they retained 100-150 grand whatever, whether that million was at a good rate or a bad rate.
I heard that’s how Romney got less bang for the buck than he should have.
I missed that one. Anyone have that pic to post?
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