Record Political Ad Boom Looms, But ...

At the TVB Forward conference last September, Ken Goldstein, of Kantar Media CMAG, predicted that political spending at TV stations this year would fall between $2.5 billion and $3.5 billion. Even the low end of that range represents a record for political spending.

Listening intently to that forecast was Jack Poor, VP, marketing insights of TVB. He's the TVB's expert on the political category, and spends much of his time in contact with political campaign consultants and the media buying agencies that direct all the spending by candidates and their supporters.

In this interview with TVNewsCheck's Harry A. Jessell, Poor says he believes spot TV will be doing well to capture $2.5 billion this year. While it's true the presidential race and closely contested Senate races will generate big bucks for stations, he says, the take will be suppressed the lack of any major gubernatorial contest that swelled the coffers in 2010.

The good news is TV in general can expect to grab as much as a third of the total political ad spend and TV stations can expected to get four-fifths of that, he says. No other medium seems positioned to cut into stations' share.

An edited transcript:

Are we going to have a record year this year?

I think so. I think $2.5 billion is a pretty good number, but I would be scared to go higher than that. I will tell you why. Two billion five is a 20% increase over 2010 for television stations. That’s a pretty big increase.

What’s contributing to that increase?

We have got a presidential campaign going on here which we did not have in 2010. The fundraising figures have all been good. The super PACs are going to increase spending. There are going to be more states in play for the presidential race. McCain took federal funds on the Republican side last time so there was a cap on the amount of money he could spend.

Then, you have got issues like early voting, which people are starting to address. That could lengthen the window in which they’re going to have to spend. The last time around, the early voting in the states where that's applicable was about 50% of the total vote.

In the Senate, it’s 53-47 or something like that with retirements and open seats so that’s going to be in play and the House has all the freshmen seat holders from 2010. All those seats are going to be in play. There are PACs that are specifically devoted to the Republican takeover of the Senate and the Democrats want to recapture the House. So there’s going to be a lot of spending on a lot of different levels.

You think more states will be in play on the presidential level?

They're looking at four new states that qualify as battleground states and those are Iowa, New Mexico, New Hampshire and Arizona.

Arizona?

Yep. That’s part of Obama's Western strategy. If Obama can’t carry Ohio or he can’t carry Florida, he is going to have to do very, very well in the West and the ones he can win in the West are Colorado, which he won [in 2008]; Nevada, which he won; and he was very close in Arizona and New Mexico.

Where will the big Senate races be?

It looks like there are going to be eight or nine really heavy-duty senate races. One of them is [Democratic incumbent Claire] McCaskill in Missouri and another is [Republican incumbent] Scott Brown in Massachusetts. Those are going to be highly contested.

And you think a lot of PAC money will be going into House races?

Yes, there are specific PACs that have been formed to recapture the House for the Democrats. Also, that’s where a lot of the party money goes. Plus, redistricted districts. In states that have gained districts, obviously they’re going to be open districts, and in states that have been forced to consolidate, they are going to be discombobulated, too.

So what are the factors that might depress the spending?

The biggest single thing — and I think people overlook it — is that what caused the monster year in 2010 [were] gubernatorial races. You must have had $600 million worth of gubernatorial spending. That’s going to cause a huge void. It’s going to create difficult comps.

You had monster, monster races. In California, the gubernatorial race was $200 million. Meg Whitman spent $115 million of her own money, and there were big governor races in California, Florida, Texas, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Massachusetts and Wisconsin. That was enormous.

Is anything happening at the state-house level this year?

The biggest gubernatorial race is Beverly Perdue in North Carolina and after that they get very small.

Why do you remain so confident that most of the money is going to go to spot TV?