Presidential politics no boon for CT's ad industry

Images | Contributed Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and Jeb Bush have put out TV ads to get their messages out to voters, but no presidential candidates have aired ads in Connecticut.

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By David Medina Special to the Hartford Business Journal

Connecticut's TV and radio industries precariously expect to earn little or no revenue from this year's presidential election, even as candidates pour tens of millions of dollars nationally into advertising to bolster their bids for the White House.

That's because Connecticut will hold its party primary elections April 26, after 37 other states have already made known their Republican and Democratic presidential preferences. If history is any indicator, both parties' front runners will have already emerged by the time Nutmeg State primary voters head to the polls.

Connecticut also has the distinction of being a “predictably blue” Democratic state with a mere seven Electoral College votes in the general election. In short, Connecticut typically has very little impact on who eventually becomes president. Candidates, therefore, have little incentive to purchase advertising here.

“Most of the money will go to the key battleground states and, by definition, that does not include Connecticut,” says professor Erika Franklin Fowler, co-director of the Wesleyan University Media Project, which tracks and analyzes all political advertisements aired on broadcast television. “Ads only really matter at the margins; election outcomes have more to do with larger issues like the state of the economy.”

The one way Connecticut media may be able to reap some benefits of the presidential ad wars is if the race remains competitive, which it has so far. The mixed results of the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary have given Connecticut media executives reason to be cautiously optimistic going forward.

Surprises

In Iowa, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton split the Democratic vote almost evenly and Republicans Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio finished within four percentage points of each other. In New Hampshire, Sanders beat Clinton handily, while Trump took the Republican nomination, followed by John Kasich, Cruz and Jeb Bush.

“I was a little bit surprised,” said Stephen Rabb, senior manager for special projects and research at Fox CT, about the Iowa results. “But it feels like, from my perspective, that we might see some activity here.”

The bottom line is that Connecticut's role in presidential elections only matters on those rare occasions when the outcome of the race is unforeseeable over the course of the primary season.

In 2008, for example, then-Sen. Barack Obama was locked into a tight race with Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party nomination. In order to make their primary votes count, Connecticut and 22 other states held their primaries on Feb. 5, so-called “Super Tuesday.” According to TNS Media Intelligence/CMag, a commercial ad tracking agency, the uncertainty of the outcome forced the Obama campaign to spend $731,000 on local campaign advertising, most of it in the days prior to Super Tuesday. The Clinton campaign spent another $417,000 here in a losing effort. Moreover, Clinton visited the state twice and Obama held a campaign rally at Hartford's XL Center that attracted 16,000 supporters. Republican nominee John McCain's campaign purchased no advertising from Connecticut stations.

Four years later, when it was evident early on that Obama would win re-election by a landslide, neither he nor his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, purchased campaign ads in Connecticut.

When spending makes a difference

“Candidates will spend when it looks as though their advertising can make a difference,” Rabb said. “Frequently, they will place orders and, as it gets closer to the primary election and the outcome looks more lopsided, they'll move their money elsewhere. The reverse also happens in that, when the race looks close, they will pull money from another market and spend it here.”

If there are no clear front runners by April 26, Connecticut broadcast stations could also profit greatly from the growing use of negative ads produced by political action committees and outside interest groups with generic all-American sounding names, such as Citizens for Truth and Justice. Federal election regulations require that broadcast stations charge candidates a discounted “lowest unit rate cost” for their campaign commercials. The preferential rate, however, does not apply to PACs and outside interest groups.

“They have to pay whatever the market will bear, and in a hotly contested race, the price of that kind of advertising can go through the roof,” says Wesleyan's Fowler. Modern candidates, she explained, prefer to have outside groups attack their opponents, to protect their own credibility. “This year we're seeing a large disconnect between ads on air and polling numbers. Part of that goes back to the fundamental question that if most people don't like what you are selling, it doesn't matter how much you try to sell it.”

Even under the most ideal conditions, however, Connecticut's share of the presidential advertising dollar pales in comparison to the amounts spent on television and radio advertising during a tight race for governor or the U.S. Senate. In 2010, when both offices were in contention, a record $32 million was spent on local television advertising alone.

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