Poor Candidates Err in Trying to Emulate Rich Candidates

Instead of buying less, they ought to buy smart - Part 1 of 2

While the world focuses on the presidential election, as a longtime media pro I’m fixated on the Congressional.

In New York’s Democratic Primaries, Democratic Socialist Congressmembers Jamaal Bowman and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez spent PAC campaign dollars locally on the same broadcast shows that Donald Trump has bought before, and will buy again in 2024. On one Facebook string, a sniper wrote that there weren’t many Democratic Socialists. Maybe not compared to all registered voters, but New York’s two Socialist Democratic candidates’ TV ads flooded parts of three states while their constituents live in a few zip codes. The sniper listed New York as his home. If he hadn’t seen the shock and awe of ads for Jamaal Bowman or felt the gatling from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s guns, he may be one of the many voters who’ve shifted their viewing away from broadcast.

A search revealed him as a technical consultant to Bull, currently in repeats on ION. Between Bull’s premier in 2016 and its finale in 2024, it lost half of its audience and… CBS never buried it on Friday or Saturday nights. Whether the reports that Bull was cancelled because its star retired are true, what’s indisputable is that competition from digital broadcast and streaming channels expanded one’s viewing options from 500 to 20,000 over its run. Long before that, one TV commercial director sheepishly admitted that just when his team thought it was time for new copy, testing showed that the majority of the audience’s target hadn’t seen it.

Bull’s a hit. Its repeats run on ION’s lead channel. But one night while surfing, I noticed Bull preempted for Bay FC vs. Angel City in National Women’s Soccer League. The league plays through November 3rd. It’s in flight for both our presidential and congressional candidates through their national feed. That means ION may have already sold to a presidential candidate. Its digital signals ION.2.3.4 come from out-of-town low-power stations, essentially creating a low-power streaming digital broadcast network. In point of fact, streaming is super cable.

Neither of New York’s Democratic Socialist congressional primary candidates nor the centrist candidate, the victorious George Latimer, bought the digital channels aligned with the broadcast stations. But New Jersey’s Rob Menendez did. In addition to buying the entire tristate region on WNBC.4.1, he bought the entire region on WNBC.4.2, or COZI, and others. I looked for New York’s candidates, but found them only in their regular haunts: local news, live sports, Jeopardy! The Price I$ Right, Wheel of Fortune, Family Feud and others. The price may be right for candidates on WCBS.2.1, but they’ll reach the same voters for less on WCBS.2.4, or FAVE TV’s, Bar Rescue.

One night, a 40-year-old, USC educated video producer with a wife, kid and an expensive apartment walk into a bar. I’m there. After a brief chat, he resists me on other categories, but buys in fully that a presidential candidate wouldn’t pay a premium to buy a show with more viewing voters on average than fewer viewing voters on average. I explained that Nielsen tells us that over the weeks of a candidate’s campaign, a lot of likely voters see each candidate’s commercials a lot of times, but there are three problems: the ratings of most of the shows that they sponsor are so low that “a lot” isn’t many anymore. Consultants with the most funds only buy the most expensive shows. But consultants to candidates with the least funds only buy the most expensive shows, too.

As early as 1926, silent movies were distributed to movie houses throughout New York City and each were signed for by a theater representative. Today, in Manhattan I see ads for Mike Lawlor, an Upstate Republican incumbent and Mondaire Jones, the Democratic challenger, running for yet another seat that I can’t vote for. And I’m going to be seeing a lot more of them. Same thing in New Jersey with Sue Altman, the Democrat challenging incumbent Republican Tom Kean, Jr., the former Governor’s son. No money was spent distributing films to theatres in 1926 north of Yonkers in New York State and that campaign was for the U.S. Senate, a statewide race. Did New Jersey’s candidates’ films run in New York’s theaters to reach people in town for dinner and a movie?

(Part 2 will be running tomorrow)