The deluge of political ads that have been assaulting our sense of hearing and good taste has brought in over $2.4 billion dollars this campaign season. The number of ads has grown so quickly that some local stations are struggling to find enough salable time to sell to super-pacs and candidates.
The station’s new 4 p.m. news program offers interviews with candidates and was created in response to greater interest in the races by viewers, he said, noting that “political campaigns always prefer news because there is a higher propensity to get out to voters.”
Woods said that by replacing “Ellen” with the political newscast, the station gets to keep all of the revenue from ads, rather than share it with Warner Bros., its syndication partner for the daytime talk show.
This is a startling admission for a number of reasons. One is that the idea of the public interest is quite subservient to commercial interests. Whatever obligations we might wish to believe networks possess regarding the democratic process, it pales in comparison to their fealty to the bottom line. The presidential election in two years will probably cost around $8 billion dollars.
Election Cost: Opensecrets.org
This influx of cash also highlights why political processes and institutions are so difficult to change. If we envision the media as a watchdog of the powerful, then the fact that it also happens to be on the payroll of the powerful creates a substantial conflict of interest (or at the very least the impression of one). Where will the impetus come from for campaign finance reform, or any meaningful change, when the status quo is just so darn profitable?
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