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Are You Sick of Political Ads on Radio and TV?
- Thread starter landtuna
- Start date
Well political ads will run all the way to certification day and inauguration day as proven in the 2020 presidential election and 2022 congressional and gubernatorial elections.
Yes the fear is another January 6th type event would hit at both Washington DC and the state capitals for certification day.
Yes the fear is another January 6th type event would hit at both Washington DC and the state capitals for certification day.
As I understand, as PACS, Lowest Unit Rate does not apply.
There was an interesting article today about how the presidential campaigns and aligned PACs are dividing up their TV spend both differently from each other and differently from past years. It didn’t get down to the individual markets within a given state but it seems reasonable to extrapolate there are shifts there as well, and it was made quite clear what happens on the next 50 days cannot be based on what’s happened to date.
Regardless, there seems to be a play on the D side to cut the margins in red areas of purple states, so some cash seems to be going to what might appear on the surface to be an odd choice compared to the obvious investments to boost turnout in bluer areas.
At this moment, subject to change, it would appear the democratic advertisers are spreading the field a bit more and the republicans are fortifying their bulwarks. The endless ads are less to persuade the mix of undecideds and persuadables than to motivate the bases, with turnout in a handful of states deciding the whole thing.
Regardless, there seems to be a play on the D side to cut the margins in red areas of purple states, so some cash seems to be going to what might appear on the surface to be an odd choice compared to the obvious investments to boost turnout in bluer areas.
At this moment, subject to change, it would appear the democratic advertisers are spreading the field a bit more and the republicans are fortifying their bulwarks. The endless ads are less to persuade the mix of undecideds and persuadables than to motivate the bases, with turnout in a handful of states deciding the whole thing.
Fortunately, none of it is up to you.
When was this, the 60's? 70's? A lot has changed since then.
For national ad buys in a group TV environment, it could be a serious windfall. TV station groups live for the political season, especially for stations in swing states. I know some about this topic mentioned stations that have turned away political dollars, but there's no way that's a current sentiment. Given the state of inconsistent advertising revenue in this country, I'll guarantee you nobody is turning away money.
They're idiots.
Again, you aren't the customer, advertisers are.
The 'inside baseball' perspective means never turning down a dollar, especially when it comes to OTA broadcasting.
Those very same advertisers are also bombarding ad buys with cable/streaming/etc. as well.
Watching on a 'smart' TV these days? Terrible idea, it would seem.
I'm watching my streaming on the computer these days...
Mid 60's.
Well, yes and no. Actually, both. Advertisers pay the bills but the station would not be viable without listeners/viewers so the number of viewers/listeners a station has (of the correct demo of course) decides directly whether the advertiser makes buys.
This is where this discussion goes to the facts about audience behavior. Everyone doesn't respond the way you do. How do we know? Personal people meters measure the people in the room when those commercials air. If the public responded the way you say, and left the room or changed the station, it would show up in the detailed ratings, and the advertisers wouldn't buy the time. The reason they buy the time is because they know the ads will have the desired effect, which is to get the attention of the viewers. The fact that we're talking about these ads says that the advertisers got your attention. If the commercials create a negative reaction, it's better than having NO reaction. That's why the production style is loud and aggressive. They know what they're doing. They're making you mad. It's not just wallpaper that you can ignore.
Actually it's no. Radio and TV stations air programming to as broad an audience as possible especially targeting demographics that advertisers want to reach. As BigA said; outlier listeners/viewers are too few to matter in the scheme of thing. Advertisers are who the station owner is trying to attract. Just because a handful of curmudgeons don't like the ads, aren't going to discourage the greater result.
It's not one or the other. Stations try to attract people that advertisers want to reach, not the other way around. If a few that are out of the desired group of listeners advertisers want to reach don't like the ads won't prevent a station from running those ads.
In the "mid 60's" I was the owner of several radio stations. So I have a deep knowledge of the changes in the business, and can tell you that nearly nothing I did back then is valid today... other than the principles of hard work, following the legal rules and regulations and the like.
And you said you worked at a small market station: small markets have the greatest changes of any because of the decrease in local small businesses and a stressed economy. We're seeing more and more small market AMs and even a few FMs sign off forever of late.
"Listeners" are the product of a radio station, just as cars are the product of an auto company. The better the quality of the car, the higher the price; the more listeners, the higher the rates.
TV is declining significantly faster than radio — Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, Disney+, AppleTV… etc.
Radio being free will lead to the obsolesce of TV long before it.
Back in my early days in the business, my father offered some salient advice:
If you want to make a million dollars in radio, spend two.
If you want to make a million dollars in TV, spend ten.
In other words, neither radio nor TV has ever been a particularly stable or profitable business. That's why we've said many times, that if it weren't for consolidation in the 90's, radio in particular, would have been in much worse shape earlier.
Both radio and TV have competition in streaming that nobody had ever thought would happen. It's just that TV has taken a larger hit since the pandemic with even TV parent companies building a streaming model. As the sales manager where I worked commented regarding streaming: 'As a media company, we need to go where the viewers are.' 'We can't afford to sit back and let companies like Amazon and Apple come in and wipe our industry out.'
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