Many Political Ads Crowded Out of TV

Not only do candidates for statewide office rate scarcely a mention on television news shows, many are finding they can’t even buy their way into people’s living rooms.

Candidates for lieutenant governor, attorney general, treasurer and some other state offices complain that TV network affiliates in Los Angeles, San Francisco and elsewhere are rationing commercial time--and in some instances turning down their money.

“It’s supply and demand,” said Bill Burton, spokesman for KABC-TV Channel 7 in Los Angeles. “It’s a matter of what’s available.”

Led by big-spending former Northwest Airlines Chairman Al Checchi, well-heeled candidates for governor and U.S. Senate have driven up the cost of commercial time and gobbled up many choice slots.

The situation is rife with irony, given that candidates in California long ago abandoned handshaking, whistle-stop campaigning. With such “retail” politicking all but gone from statewide races, campaigns often come down to dueling TV ads.

“If you can’t get the press to write stories and you’re frozen out of television, how do you communicate with the voters?” asked Assemblyman Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove), who raised $1 million for his campaign for the Republican nomination for treasurer and now is having trouble getting on the air.

Pringle’s main opponent, Assemblyman Jan Goldsmith (R-Poway), has been turning to cable outlets. But cable has limited reach and poses some logistical hurdles, so candidates generally prefer broadcast stations.

KCBS-TV Channel 2 and KPIX-TV, the CBS affiliates in Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively, are taking the hardest lines among the network affiliates in California’s two largest markets. They won’t sell time to any candidates for races other than governor and U.S. Senate.

“It’s pretty dramatic. There have always been some limits, but they’ve never been so low,” said Sacramento consultant Richie Ross, who represents state Sen. Bill Lockyer in his race for the Democratic nomination for attorney general and Assemblyman Cruz Bustamante, a Democrat running for lieutenant governor.

Most consultants figure that for an ad to be effective, viewers must see it 10 times. This year, the cost of ensuring such repetition is about $1.2 million. But Ross has found that stations are rationing his candidates to no more than $500,000 in air time per week, “unless you want to buy in [costly] prime time.”

Stations are trying to keep long-term commercial clients happy by ensuring that there is enough air time for their ads. When they do sell time to candidates, stations charge less than what they charge clients selling consumer products and services.

Political ads are “not useful” for the stations’ regular viewership, said Darry Sragow, manager of Checchi’s campaign for the Democratic nomination for governor. “Political clients aren’t long-term clients. They operate on tight deadlines. It’s a lot easier to deal with Tide or Coke.”

The limits on candidates do not apply to campaigns for and against ballot initiatives. Unlike candidates, promoters and foes of initiatives get no break on rates they pay. Still, campaign managers involved in initiative fights are battling another problem brought about by the current heavy advertising: diminishing returns.

“People are saying, ‘I’m sick of seeing all the political ads,’ ” said Wayne Johnson, who is managing the campaign against Proposition 223, a measure to alter school funding. “The more advertising there is, the less impact those ads will have. There is a lot of viewer fatigue.”

“My heart doesn’t bleed for people who can’t put what are largely misleading ads on television to confuse voters,” said Tony Miller, a Democrat running a low-budget campaign for lieutenant governor and a sponsor of an initiative two years ago to cap fund-raising. “They can’t disgorge the vast amounts of special interest money they’ve raised.”

But as pundits and underfunded candidates decry the power of the costly 30-second TV ads, candidates with money to spend and not enough stations willing to take their cash say that voters will lack information come Tuesday.

Susan Neisloss, spokeswoman for KCBS, noted that stations are required only to sell air time to federal candidates. By selling to candidates for governor, the CBS affiliates have gone beyond legal requirements, she said.

If the stations decided to sell to one candidate for an office, out of fairness they would have to sell time to all candidates for that office, further clogging air time, she said.

In smaller markets, statewide candidates must compete not only with the candidates for governor and U.S. senator, but also with local candidates.

In Fresno, Mark Benscheidt, general sales manager for KSEE-TV, the NBC affiliate, is selling air time not just to candidates for governor and U.S. Senate, but also to candidates for district attorney, City Council, county supervisor and county clerk--the races he believes are of particular importance to his hometown voters.

To make room for those local races--and to ensure that advertisers of consumer products have enough air time--KSEE refuses to sell ads for four statewide races: treasurer, controller, superintendent of public instruction and secretary of state.

Even with the limits, however, KSEE has a glut of political ads. It aired only two nonpolitical commercials during its Thursday noon news broadcast. Candidates covet commercial time during news shows because they assume news viewers are the most likely voters.

“As much as this is perceived as a windfall, it’s a real issue for regular [commercial] advertisers,” Benscheidt said. “They endure hell. They can’t get their word out. We’d like to be an integral part of their plan.”

Because some candidates can’t buy sufficient air time, they probably will rely more heavily on so-called slate cards, the mailers timed to arrive in voters’ mailboxes now. Slates purport to show who is endorsing various candidates. In fact, candidates pay for the “endorsements.”

“The real question is how do you campaign in this state,” said Bob Stern of the Center for Responsive Government in Los Angeles. “The irony is that TV is not covering the campaigns in their news, and the candidates can’t buy TV time. So where’s the campaign?”