The viability of television’s business model is being debated this week—in Vegas of course, mecca for the gambling man—but the viability of radio’s business model was a subtext last week at the American Association of Political Consultants’ annual conference.
The practitioners roaming the hallways at the “Pollies” have a few billion dollars to spend every two years. Most of that money goes to media properties whose bottom lines depend more and more on political ad spending. Small wonder, then, that the Pollies top sponsors are media brands—both the big winners of the latest election and the up-and-comers. This year’s roster included Spanish media company Entravision, local broadcast industry rep TVB, and the major players in local cable.
And radio? Other than Entravision’s Spanish-language stations, the only lead-sponsoring “radio” property was Pandora. Online radio.
But in case you weren’t reading between the sponsor lines, during a Q&A on 2012 media buying, Arbitron’s Neil Schwartz quizzed panelist Jim Margolis about what share of the Obama campaign’s ad spending went to radio. Margolis’ firm GMMB handled the Obama buy. Margolis hedged.
Subscribe Today
Our subscribers have first access to individual race pages for each House, Senate and Governors race, which will include race ratings (each race is rated on a seven-point scale) and a narrative analysis pertaining to that race.