Lawmakers Call TV Ads Too Vital, Too Costly : Politics: Support grows in Congress for legislation that would force broadcast stations to cut the rates they charge candidates.

Politicians say they can’t live without television but gripe that high TV advertising rates force them to spend too much time begging for money from fat cats.

“During my 1986 reelection campaign, I found myself raising money to get on TV to raise money to get on TV to raise money to get on TV,” said Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.). “It’s a vicious cycle.”

The result is growing support in Congress for legislation that would force broadcast stations to cut their campaign advertising rates.

It’s a drive that crosses party lines, as Republicans and Democrats alike try to make television share the blame for an embarrassing rash of congressional ethics problems linked to political fund raising.

Virtually all of more than a dozen campaign-finance reform plans now circulating on Capitol Hill contain provisions that would make broadcasters cut their rates for political ads or give candidates free air time.

“If we only passed that and nothing else, it would be very significant,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “In competitive races, the single biggest thing pressing us to raise more money is broadcast media time.”

Under the current system, candidates complain that their contact with voters is limited because of the time they must spend raising money from corporate and union political action committees and wealthy benefactors.

“Mill visits and dropping by the country store have become a casualty of the system,” Hollings said.

“Television advertising is the name of the game,” he said. “The hard fact of life for a candidate is that if you’re not on TV, you’re not truly in the race.”

Campaign spending patterns reflect that shift in strategy.

In 1956, candidates for federal, state and local office spent about $10 million--less than 6% of their campaign budgets--on TV and radio time, according to the Federal Communications Commission.

Three decades later, Republican Ed Zschau and Democrat Alan Cranston alone spent a combined $13 million as Cranston successfully defended his Senate seat in California.

U.S. House candidates in 1988 on average spent 20% of their campaign money on TV and radio ad time, a total of more than $50 million, according to the National Assn. of Broadcasters. Senate candidates, meanwhile, devoted nearly 44% of their campaign dollars to broadcast time, spending more than $200 million.

Averages, however, can be deceptive.

While Hollings paid $2,400 for 30 seconds of prime-time advertising on the largest TV station in South Carolina, Cranston and Zschau had to pay $30,000 for comparable air time in Los Angeles.

Senate candidates in competitive races may spend as much as 90% of their campaign dollars on TV advertising and on fund raising to finance TV ads, according to the Senate Commerce Committee.

“The spiraling cost of campaigns is directly attributable to the increase of television advertising in general and the widespread belief that demagogic advertising works,” said Curtis Gans, vice president of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate.

The committee, a nonpartisan group studying the decline in voter participation, found that spending in the most expensive Senate campaigns has doubled since 1974, after adjusting for inflation, and that the amount politicians spend on TV and radio ads has more than tripled.

“Nothing or next to nothing is spent on any activity that involves the citizenry,” Gans said. “We manipulate our citizens, we do not involve them.”

Politicians and the media consultants who run their campaigns blame the high cost of advertising on price-gouging broadcasters.

Congress in 1972 told broadcasters they could charge candidates no more than the “lowest unit cost” paid by commercial advertisers. However, stations skirt that rule by charging more for spots that are guaranteed to run on a specific date and time than for so-called preemptible spots that can be rescheduled.

Except for a few major sports events such as the Super Bowl and the World Series, commercial advertisers buy preemptible ad time. They know that if their spots are bumped, the ads will reach the same audience share later.

Political candidates don’t have that luxury. To ensure that their ads don’t get bumped in the crucial weeks before an election, they may pay up to eight times the preemptible rates paid by commercial advertisers.

Jan Crawford, a consultant who specializes in buying media time for Democratic candidates, said she spent $85,000 on TV and radio advertising in 1974 to elect Richard Lamm governor of Colorado. Twelve years later, she spent $1.5 million in the same state for air time for then-Rep. Timothy E. Wirth’s successful Senate race.

“Costs are now determined by what the market can bear,” Crawford told the Senate Commerce Committee.

Catherine Farrell, a media buyer for Republican candidates, recalled that in one 1988 race, a station raised the price for a local advertising spot during ABC’s “Good Morning America” show from $80 to $400 in one week.

“There was no arguing with them,” she said. “They said, ‘We have nothing else, that’s it, take it or leave it.’ ”

Hollings, McConnell and Sen. John C. Danforth (R-Mo.) have proposed legislation that would require broadcasters to charge candidates preemptible rates for guaranteed time slots.

But in defense of their rates, broadcasters stress that two-thirds of political ads are placed in the last three months of the year, when advertising space demand is high because of the new fall TV season and Christmas sales.

“Advertising is only one component of a campaign’s expenses,” said Levitt Pope, president of radio and television station WPIX in New York. “Travel costs are higher, telephone charges have increased, direct mail and polling costs have risen.”

Pope also blames political consultants and media buyers, who he said want to spend more on broadcast time than on phone banks because they often get a 15% commission on ads they place.

Echoing that criticism are reformers such as Gans.

“What has developed . . . is a competition not between parties, principles, proposals or candidates, but between media advisers who compete with each other to see who can outslick the other and win,” Gans said.