Happy Friday, everyone!
For this week's poll question, we'd like to know:
How was your local political advertising this year?
Looking forward to reading your replies!
This has been the silly season for us. I work for the most listened to station, a news/talker that has both local and national hosts. This was the year for local races, Mayor on down and it was also the first year that management asked me to handle political ads. In years past our General Sales Managers took care of it for their own stations (we have 6 locally).
With my background and abilities to use the studio and knowledge of FEC requirements, I could carve out the time on nights and weekends to get it done.
The largest race was for Mayor which I did not handle however over a million bucks per candidate was spent in the market including all TV, radio, print, social etc. I'm not sure how much our stations got.
Starting with the spring primary race (voting was in May) I reached out to all contested races in our county and that generated about $7,000. The General Election has been really crazy. I've had to clear my schedule to accommodate the candidates including some from out of town but still in our listening area.
Thursday I had a candidate's rep contact me at 8:30am wanting to spend $2900 on Friday and Monday. This morning I got an email from a candidate that wants to add more ads on Monday, so I am meeting him at 9 today. What I have handled personally is around $25,000 for Tuesdays General Election.
This means lots of bumps for our regular clients but we do our best to move the ones that are not time sensitive and keep the event ads on.
WOWO is usually 70 to 90% sold out in primetime year round without political ads with rates running from $60 to $125 per minute.
