The presidential election may be nearly two years down the road, but the TV biz is already salivating.
A drawn-out race for the White House is sure to try the patience of the electorate. It's all upside for TV stations and cable nets, however. They're already reaping campaign cash amid predictions that the 2008 campaign will easily eclipse 2004's as the most expensive in history.
Every presidential election -- and, to a lesser extent, the midterms -- the American political process dumps money into the coffers of local television stations. But the current prospect of California, Florida, Illinois and New Jersey pushing their primaries up to February creates what strategists are calling a de facto "national TV primary."
The primary pileup will force candidates to spend huge and early on television in some of the nation's biggest and most expensive markets. Already there are 16 official candidates, with several more mulling bids, making it the most crowded field in decades. Plus, for the first time in 80 years, there is no sitting president or vice president running, but with Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Barack Obama and Rudolph Giuliani all potentially in the mix, there's plenty of names with fund-raising clout.
That means candidates will have to buy time in Los Angeles, Chicago and the greater New York area, in addition to relatively cheap markets Des Moines, Iowa, Manchester, N.H., and Charleston, S.C.
This is likely to go down as the election in which all the serious candidates forgo federal election funds, meaning they can raise cash simultaneously for both the primary and general elections, doubling what they can take from each donor. Clinton has already done just that.
"Presuming several candidates opt out of matching funds, then fund-raising will have no roof," says Leland Westerfield, a BMO Capital Markets analyst who's predicting $2.8 billion will be spent on TV advertising before the general election in 2008, 65% more than in 2004.
And despite inroads made by local cable and the Internet, more than 80% of the dollars will flow to local stations, targeted largely at battleground areas.
Candidates still will spend heavily in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, which all hold primaries or caucuses in January, but an early primary in California, Florida, Illinois and New Jersey gives candidates with coastal appeal a big boost.
The attack ads have already begun. Last week Moveon.org placed the first media buy in the 2008 election cycle. The ad, airing in New Hampshire and Iowa, slams Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for supporting increased troop levels in Iraq.
"This is going to be a wilder year than most in that we've got a lot of candidates and they're all working very early," says Jeff Bartlett, general manager of Hearst-Argyle's ABC affiliate WMUR in New Hampshire. "In the last few election cycles, we haven't seen any money before August."
An early coast-to-coast primary may shift some of the emphasis from local broadcast. "It's going to be local markets for the early states and then national cable, because there isn't enough time tactically to develop a market-by-market strategy," Backus says.
As with their announcements, candidates increasingly are looking to communicate directly to the public through their own Web sites and sites such as YouTube.com.
"All of these campaigns are not going to have the money to spend on television like Hillary or Obama would," says former Clinton aide Craig Minassian, now at HBO. "They are finding creative ways to not have to spend money on television by exploiting new technology."
For national TV, the benefits will come in the form of ratings points. Network and cable news operations will get a lift, as will the latenight circuit, with a steady stream of material for shows like "Saturday Night Live," "Late Show With David Letterman" and "The Daily Show."
"From a comedy perspective, I think everyone's a little exhausted of the current president, so it's good to get new looks in," says "SNL" co-head writer Seth Meyers. "It's a lot of personalities and egos -- any time you put the magnifying glass on it, great things will happen for comedians."
"SNL" also plans to mock the debates when they begin in April. "There's a big race on for who's got the best Sam Brownback," he says.
Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," which thrives on mocking the excesses of its nonsatirical news peers, lapped the field by inviting Iowa's Democratic Gov. Tom Vilsack as a guest Dec. 18 to kick off its "Indecision 2008" coverage. Even financial cabler CNBC has a play, tagging a segment last week "Obamanomics."
For cable news, an election campaign provides an ongoing, critical narrative, and the sparks are already starting to fly. Fox News picked up a claim in the conservative Insight magazine alleging Obama had attended a radical Muslim school as a child in Indonesia.
CNN gleefully debunked the report, while FNC's John Gibson blamed the Clinton campaign for leaking the story in the first place.
All three cable news nets are trying to build a brand around the race, a cornerstone of which is hosting an early debate. Fox News was first in, announcing it would host the Republicans in South Carolina in May; MSNBC one-upped Fox by hosting the Dems in South Carolina on April 26.
But that was before CNN swooped in with the grand prize: both parties on consecutive days (April 4 and 5) in New Hampshire, in a partnership with WMUR and the New Hampshire Union Leader newspaper.
At this early stage, the cablers provide critical oxygen to candidates hoping to lock down donors and staff.
"This election is the fight for dollars at this point, and they want their contributors to see their candidates out there," says MSNBC political editor Tammy Haddad. "There are more people running than in 44 years. They are fighting each other for their moment on the air."
So far, the Clinton camp has shown itself the master at playing the system. Like a number of other candidates, she released her statement on the Web Jan. 20, allowing it to be picked up and rebroadcast, unfiltered, by the TV media.
After releasing her statement on a Saturday, she skipped the Sunday morning talkshows to claim prime real estate on all three network newscasts the following Monday night. She also did "Today," "Good Morning America," "The Early Show" and CNN's "American Morning," pushing Obama out of the news cycle until the State of the Union.
If Moveon.org's ads are a sign of things to come, it's about to get pretty rough out there. The PAC's ad, designed to erode McCain's base in early primary states, shows him in various grip-and-grin poses with President Bush as a voiceover intones, "John McCain has done more than just embrace George Bush's failed policy in Iraq; it was John McCain's idea to escalate the war there."
"We wanted to show there is a political price to pay for escalating in Iraq," says Moveon.org Washington director Tom Matzzie.
"It shows the campaign is getting meaner sooner," says media consultant Eric Dezenhall. And it's just about to get interesting.
"Watch how Obama handles stress," he says. "This is a guy who is plucked from obscurity and we don't know if he can take a punch yet."
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