COST OF POLITICAL TV ADS SOAR

Candidates for state and local office may be raising funds for their campaigns via the Internet but they are spending them mostly on local television, the Los Angeles Times reported today (Friday). Indeed, the newspaper noted, politicians are virtually ignoring the web when it comes to advertising in a rush to grab time on local television sets that have more than doubled the cost of a TV ad on some of them. A 30-second TV spot in Los Angeles, for example, is now going for $5,000 versus $2,000 in 2008. In all, local stations are expected to rake in about $2 billion in campaign spending this year, with Internet sites receiving just $50 million, the Times said. Wayne Johnson, who heads a Sacramento agency that advises Republican candidates, told the newspaper, “Television delivers a mass audience in a short amount of time and you don’t have that same assurance with the Internet,” where, he observed, ads can be avoided with a click.