Walking by the newspaper stand, a particular article in Friday edition of The Morning Call caught my eye. AD WARS: Campaigning Through Commercials. Since we had just been talking about the role of the media the previous class, I decided to read the article. Since this is a local paper, the article refers specifically to the ads aired in Pennsylvania. The campaigns spent a combined $2.6 million in Pennsylvania alone in the week following the major parties' conventions (McCain: $1,621,000 and Obama:$948,000). These ads ran 1,800 times. A letup in the ad wars is not expected due to the importance of winning Pennsylvania. These ads continue to attack the opposition and draw attention to the current state of the economy.
I found the last line of the article, a quote from Governor Ed Rendell, to be quite compelling. He said, "There is so much free media that you can put an ad on for a day or two and have an impact that is fairly lasting...You are seeing ads roll over in incredible time periods". This insight points to the changes that have occurred in advertising in general. Ads only need to air once before they are posted on YouTube or played over on talk shows. This makes me wonder where the millions of dollars that candidates spend on advertising goes if so much free media is available? And could this money be better spent?
The answer to the second question I'm sure is yes. If people worked as hard to raise money for other causes as they do for campaign ads this country could be a better place.
2 comments:
I agree that the country would be better off if candidates in any election spent less money on advertising, especially negative advertising. It is amazing to me how much fluff is in their ads as well. Most of the ads I have seen don't even talk about what they plan to do but how the other candidate is dangerous. People don't learn anything from these ads.
I have always wondered where the money from campaigns went to. Traveling costs and speech writer's fees are a big part of it I am sure, but is spending over $1,000,000 on advertising alone really necessary? I think that people who support candidates should have a right to see how and where they are spending their money in full(i.e. official records and tax files) just as the public is allowed access to all charity events spending, to make sure that the money is being spent on the charity, and not on the charity organizers.
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