Obama campaign, with purse swelling, plans half-hour primetime TV ad

By Jim Rutenberg and Brian Stelter
The N.Y. Times
(October 9, 2008) Senator Barack Obama has become the first presidential candidate in 16 years to buy a half-hour of prime time network television for a campaign infomercial.

Officials at the Obama campaign and at several television networks said Thursday that Mr. Obama had completed deals to show a half-hour program about his candidacy on CBS and NBC on Wednesday, Oct. 29, less than a week before Election Day. The campaign is also talking to ABC and Fox about similar deals, though the potential of a World Series Game 6 may make that impossible on Fox.

It was an extraordinary move illustrating the spending flexibility Mr. Obama enjoys as his campaign raises huge sums outside of the restrictive campaign finance system, which imposes spending limits in return for matching federal money.

As a participant in the system, which caps total general election spending at $84 million, Senator John McCain would have a hard time matching Mr. Obama’s move, though there were indications Thursday that his team had at least looked into prices.

The Obama program -- the content of which has not been disclosed -- is scheduled to run at 8 p.m. in the time slots of “The New Adventures of Old Christine” on CBS and the first half of the new version of “Knight Rider” on NBC.

Neither network officials nor Obama campaign aides would discuss the cost of the television time. An analysis of advertising rates shows that the price of the commercial time alone between 8 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. on a Wednesday night would be about $1 million. It was unclear whether the networks were charging the campaign for only that commercial time or for the entire half hour, which would cost significantly more.

The news of Mr. Obama’s planned television special was first reported Thursday by the Web site of The Hollywood Reporter.

“It feels very old-fashioned, very 1960 or something,” said Jim Jordan, a Democratic strategist. “But the truth is there will be a certain universe of voters, disproportionately female, who are undecided and late checking in, who will be aggressively seeking information at that point.”

Half-hour commercials were far more common during the early days of television.

John F. Kennedy presented a half-hour commercial that featured parts of his speech in Houston about his religion. Richard M. Nixon bought two hours of time on election eve in 1968, at a cost of $400,000. The outsider candidate Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. ran a half-hour prime time telecast on CBS in 1984, using the program to call the Democratic nominee, Walter F. Mondale, “an agent of influence” of the Soviet intelligence services. (Federal communications rules prohibit networks from censoring the content of candidates’ advertisements.)

The last candidate to use the format was Ross Perot, in 1992, when he used the time to detail his plan to cut the deficit before an audience of 16.5 million people.


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