Profits and Politics: The Cost to Democracy When Ad Spending Goes Over the Top

If campaign ads were only publicizing a pretty face and platitudes rather than peddling powerful themes that are shaping how Americans see the country and each other the biennial bonanza would be at best a story for the business news To be sure profits for local stations will be impressive The ads will saturate their airtime crowding out the 30second spots for hometown car dealers and honeybaked hams In battleground states the stations39 bosses already have to shout to be heard over their cash registers39 quotkachingsquotThe 9 billion dollar price tag to send America39s Mr Smiths to Washington however doesn39t just illuminate the mother lode broadcast and cable TV is mining For the media giants it spotlights the fact that selling political products is one of their multibilliondollar businesses Faced with cable cutting and competition from streaming hitting profits the CEOs doubtless are happy to see the political market grow Unfortunately while fattening corporate bottom lines plumps up their compensation packages it doesn39t equate with a healthy democracyA look at democratic elections here and abroad suggests the problem Compare the cost of the US midterms in 2018 to the UK39s parliamentary election the following year In 2018 Democratic and Republican candidates parties committees and political action committees PACs shelled out 57 billion in US House and Senate races in pitching the then153 million Americans registered to vote In 2019 British parties took in 386 million to fund campaigns seeking to woo the UK39s then48 million registered voters The campaign cost per registered voter for the Brits 80 cents The calculation for their Yankee cousins 3750Driven by the astronomical growth in TV ad outlays the ludicrous price of American campaigns has even Tinsel Town39s journalists whose vocabulary never lacks for superlatives grasping for adjectives Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter Michael Beach CEO of Cross Screen Media an analytics firm did his best to help With political ad spending this year on track to double compared to the previous midterm as he put it advertising buys quotwill clobber 2018quot Viewers already numbed by the nonstop political spots in the Pennsylvania Ohio North Carolina and Georgia primaries can testify to the spending tsunami to comeThe fact that the cost of television ad spending has turned political officeholding into a nonstop hustle for campaign cash isn39t in dispute Neither is the increasing political toxicity of the products campaigns buy and the TV outlets air After all it39s a partisan battleground coasttocoastWhat can a broadcast or cable network do Ask their management As Chris Ripley the CEO of Sinclair Broadcast Group owner and operator of 193 TV stations nationwide explained this month quotOn the one hand I lament that we39re in the political environment that we are On the other hand it39s very good for our businessquotRipley39s lamentations are one thing a responsible look at broadcast and cable39s contribution to the problem another For the Sinclair CEO and his corporate peers the work of Doug Amy an emeritus professor at Mount Holyoke College would be a good place to start Amy has spent a scholarly career digging into how democratic systems work here and elsewhere including the impact of money on elections Based on his research it39s not hard to see that the mounting cost of political campaigns is corrupting the democratic process itselfAs Amy would doubtless agree the devil is always in the details All politics is local and that goes for the ways in which campaigns are waged and elections run around the world How democracies are organized and the rules governing their processes the campaigns39 duration donations spending as well as an election39s procedures shape their costs But the intricacies still don39t explain why the United States spends more on politics and on political campaigns than any other country on earth It isn39t as if there aren39t alternativesTake corporate cash While the US Supreme Court has decreed corporate dollars flooding politics are simply a version of free speech democracies elsewhere would label the justices39 ruling bizarre In Europe bans on corporate cash are widespread the Brits and New Zealanders also have sharp limits on what companies can give According to Amy 77 percent of European countries provide free or subsidized access to the media for political parties Add other rules such as statutory startstop dates for campaigns As the professor aptly concludes when it comes to limiting the corrupting effects of money in politics other democracies do it betterCan the broadcast and cable business do more than piously bemoan the political environment while ignoring the cost and impact of their political advertising According to David Oxenford an attorney experienced in representing the media industry the answer is yes Under the federal Communications Act broadcasters can39t censor ads from legally qualified candidates or refuse to run them unless the ad39s contents violate a federal criminal statute But Oxenford points out the prohibition doesn39t apply to political action committees companies or other groups whose oceans of campaign cash fatten the broadcast and cable coffersOpen Secrets a campaign spending watchdog reports that the 3225 million in advertising spending in 2022 by Super PACs welfare 501c4 and trade associations unions parties and other groups is on track to leave their 2018 midterm totals in the dust Not coincidentally the vast majority of the content in ads purchased by these groups does the dirty work for their favorite candidates In other words the stations39 owners clearly can do more about quotthe political environmentquot than cry crocodile tearsHere is a simple step that would make it harder for PACs to hide under their rocks Rather than accept the mumbled unintelligible attributions and microsecond onscreen quotrevealsquot of sponsors39 names that now accompany their ads why not create an industry standard that demands an intelligible visual as well as spoken description of who is paying for the political spotA slowly enunciated quotthis ad was paid for by quot along with a web or snail mail address visible long enough to be read and copied down admittedly isn39t much But the modest requirement for real rather than sham transparency is a beginning Assuming big media39s executives can overcome their fear of irritating their cash cows in 2022 it39s also a good bet the herd will remain well within reach for milkingClick the social buttons above or below to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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Profits and Politics: The Cost to Democracy When Ad Spending Goes Over the Top

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