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Political axe grinding boosts US TV bottom lines

Written by Robin Hague

Healthcare reform, cross-dressing teachers and medicinal marijuana are touch-paper issues on American television screens

Political advertising in the US is a much welcomed antidote to the recession, with the Healthcare Reform debate pumping millions of dollars into local TV stations, especially in the home states of key lawmakers.

However, it’s not just the contentious healthcare debate that’s helping prop up television revenues. The US is unique in inviting lobbyists, politicians and other interest groups to use the airwaves to bang their particular drums on a regular basis.

The website of the Campaign Media Analysis Group reveals a blitz of political advertising, including a crusade against cyber-bullying, environmental activism, the Healthcare Reform debate and two new ads from the US National Association of Broadcasters, attacking a proposed Performance Tax for its potential effects on musicians and small town radio stations.

With Congress voting on the American Clean Energy and Security Act, lobby groups on both sides of the Green divide are lobbing grenades at each other via national television screens, while the Marijuana Policy Project continues to campaign for legalised medicinal marijuana.

At the more bizarre end of the political advertising spectrum, the National Organisation for Marriage is campaigning against gay marriage and in Alaska, the Palinesque SOS Anchorage group has purchased airtime complaining that new non-discrimination code means people could no longer object to a man in a “highly visible sales job coming to work in a dress and high heels or a male teacher coming to class as a woman”. As if he’d want to.

Nonetheless, it’s the Healthcare Reform legislation that is the Grand Fromage of all political advertising in the US at the moment, with dozens of organisations, from Health Insurance companies, to individual doctors, to patient rights groups and the right-wing US Chamber of Commerce buying bully pulpit airtime.

The Campaign Media Analysis Group told US Today that healthcare lobby groups splurged $1,000,000 on a staggering 1,900 TV spots in one week last month in Indiana alone, with $1,200,000 spent on 1,600 spots each in Arkansas and Louisiana.

These are campaigns specifically targeting Congressmen and women and Senators identified as holding the balance of power in the healthcare debate, but there are more general ads broadcast right across the United States, either in support of the legislation, or doom-mongering against it.

The surge is set to go on for some time, as the debate itself has to grind through the Senate, even before any form of legislation is framed by a joint Committee, whose machinations will themselves be subject to even more lobbying on television.

In the US, there are few regulations controlling the nature and amount of political advertising. The singular true control is a free-market one. If you have the money, you can flood the airwaves with your views.

For example, in last year’s Presidential election, Barack Obama was able to outspend John McCain nearly three to one on television, in one week in early October, splashing out more than £20-million in just 17 states.

So the ad-spend for and against healthcare reform is no surprise, given the vast powers arrayed on either side of the debate. It’s not as if the US pharmaceutical industry is shy of a few nickels and dimes, nor is the health insurance industry.

All this campaigning is helping to hold up TV advertising figures; despite the downturn, television still accounts for nearly two thirds of ad spend in the US, with print suffering as its revenues head to the Internet.

However, there will be a resolution to the healthcare reform debate and when that fat pig squeals its last, television executives will be hoping for a new red rag and a new bull.

Perhaps the closure of Guantanamo Bay, will start the axes grinding again, certainly any attempt by the White House to set new environmental targets will attract much heat and not very much light.

There’s always the helpful US democratic system to fall back on, with elections coming hard and fast, every two years for Gubernatorial, local and national Senate and Congressional positions.

It’s a pity these political ads are not subject to the same restrictions as commercials for medicines in the US, where any significant side effect must be reported in the ad, such as a promotion for an anti-asthma drug, which in some cases may cause death from asthma.

Imagine a political advertisement that carried a warning to the effect that “the claims made in the preceding commercial do not necessarily reflect the truth and may in fact be bare-faced lies”.

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