"Super-PACs May Be Bad for America, But They're Very Good for CBS"

[deminks]

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/07/super-pac-ad-spending-broadcast-consolidation

Ask the average American about super-PACs and I'd venture to guess he or she thinks of: those incessant negative political ads during the evening news, something about the Obama-Romney race, or the sheer amount of spending ($7 billion!) during the last election season. (That is, if they even know what a super-PAC is.) For the broadcasting business, though, super-PACs have come to stand for something altogether different: a big, fat payday.

The title of this post refers to something Les Moonves, the CEO of CBS Corporation, said at an entertainment law conference last year. Moonves was understandably over the moon about the rise of super-PACs: In 2012, he explained, the network's profits were expected to soar by $180 million thanks to political ads.

And it's not just CBS that's riding high thanks to political ad spending. TV stations in battleground states are magnets for ad spending, and they're driving a new wave of consolidation in the broadcast industry, leaving a handful of big media companies well-positioned to reap hundreds of millions during the 2014 midterm elections and, especially, the 2016 presidential race. Just in the past month, the Gannett company bought 20 TV stations for $1.5 billion, and the Tribune Company inked a $2.7 billion deal for 19 stations. Those deals included stations in battleground states.

(end snip)

And you wonder if the MEdia could be complicit in politics? Why the MEdia seems to be propping up the GOP when it should be gone and forgotten? Why the president's speech on the environment was relegated to the Weather Channel? Substitute MSNBC or ABC or any other MEdia out there for CBS, your local stations, too.

[KharmaTrain]

1. It's Broadcasting's Cash Cow...

...here's where the loss of the Fairness Doctrine has an effect. It used to require stations to offer their lowest rates to politicians. Now they can charge whatever the market will bear and then some. Pity a politician that doesn't have deep pockets and has to try to book time late in a campaign...between their opponent and the SuperPACs the time is extremely expensive.

The deal is the wealth isn't spread around. There are plenty of non-battleground states that saw little extra spending last year and radio, once a big beneficiary for campaign money, got very little (much to the chagrin of a lot of hate radio stations).

I suspect we'll see a tremendous amount of spending next year...but have we reached a saturation point? For all the millions the rushpublicans threw around in 2012, they got very little in return. We'll see if this pattern continues next year...

[Triana]

2. Citizens United and privatized "elections" has been a huge profitable boon for media.

Yet another reason it all ought to be stopped.

[deminks]

3. kick for the afternoon