Republican presidential candidate John McCain discarded precedent from recent elections, buying political ads on network TV for the second time in as many months.
Last month, both McCain and his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, purchased TV time during the Olympics. This time Sen. McCain is leading the charge, building on momentum he gained last week during the Republican National Convention.
His campaign bought a package of ads during network news programming starting last Thursday that ran through the weekend. The strategy was to capitalize on record TV ratings from the convention and to build on the initial media buzz about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who was selected as Sen. McCain’s running mate.
That advertising purchase also included spots that are still running during other parts of the day and against other programming.
Both ABC and CBS confirmed that the McCain campaign had purchased more time. Fox reported no similar buy and NBC didn’t return a request for comment. A McCain campaign staffer declined to comment.
The McCain campaign spent $199,300 for spots on “Good Morning America,” “Nightline” and “World News Tonight,” people familiar with the matter said. Those spots ran from Sept. 4 to Sept. 7. The purchase included six 30-second spots on “Good Morning America,” three on “World News” and two on “Nightline.”
CBS didn’t disclose the size of the McCain campaign’s purchase, but said the buy was on news and daytime programming.
CBS said the Obama campaign had asked for information about buys.
The McCain campaign has been using some of its advertising to target women since the selection of Ms. Palin as the Republican VP candidate and the CBS buy appeared to be targeted towards them.
There were indications the McCain campaign also made cable network buys. Unlike broadcast networks, cable networks don’t have to disclose the buys.
The Obama campaign launched the buying of network spots this year with a $5 million purchase of ads on NBC’s Olympics coverage and the McCain campaign subsequently bought a $6 million Olympics package.
In recent years, presidential candidates have targeted most of their advertising money to battleground states, though there has been some national cable purchased. Before this year no presidential campaign in 12 years had made a significant purchase of network TV time.
(Editor: Baumann)