newsobserver.com projects - Obama spent $82k at WRAL since June - Comments

Re: Slow Summer For McCain Ads

Proctor — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 02:41:29 -0400

As for the Republican presidential campaign outlook thus far, the best chance WRAL's advertising managers will have of experiencing a midsummer night's dream will be to go out and buy a CD of music by Mendelssohn.

Re: Obama spent $82k at WRAL since June

ryanteaguebeckwith — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:16:01 -0400

There are ad buyers who work for the campaigns that pull all this stuff together. If you're friendly, they'll sometimes give you a copy of their spreadsheets.

Dome does not know any ad buyers that well. Any readers of the blog out there?

— RTB

Re: Obama spent $82k at WRAL since June

Senate — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:44:00 -0400

How do news organizations get information like this?

http://www.politico.com/blogs/thecrypt/0708/DCCC_reserves_ad_time_in_31_districts.html

Is it volunteer efforts?

Looking for volunteers

ryanteaguebeckwith — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:27:17 -0400

If anyone wants to volunteer to help out, it wouldn't even take a reporter. The files are open to the public.

— RTB

Re: Obama spent $82k at WRAL since June

Senate — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:19:30 -0400

RTB-

You should get together with reporters in other cities and set up a clearing house to monitor political spending.

Obama spent $82k at WRAL since June

ryanteaguebeckwith — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:11:01 -0400

How are the ad wars going in North Carolina?

With the Legion of Dome interns gone, we haven't had much time lately to go check on the ad buys of the various campaigns.

But given that John McCain has recently started airing ads in North Carolina, we thought we'd see how much he's spending compared to Barack Obama.

At WRAL at least, the answer is nothing. The Raleigh TV station has no McCain file yet — not even an inquiry into ad rates.

That could mean he's relying on cable buys or isn't targeting the Triangle, or it could mean he's not advertising heavily. We won't be able to say until we visit a few more stations.

In the meantime, we can say that Obama is spending. According to his WRAL file, he's spent $82,481 on ads at that station since early June.

That's a decent amount, considering it's only mid-summer and North Carolina may or may not be a top tier swing state.