While voters may be tiring of the glut of political ads crowding the airwaves and Internet, local television stations are enjoying the increased revenues that come with political ad spending. The two leading U.S. Senate candidates, Republican Bill Cassidy and Democrat incumbent Mary Landrieu, together have spent more than $2.7 million with the four major locally owned TV stations. That’s not counting the flurry of last-minute commercials that came in over the weekend or the many third-party ads paid for by special interest groups.
As of Monday, Oct. 27, Cassidy had spent about $1.4 million on ads that ran on WAFB, WBRZ, WVLA and WGMB—which is about $207,000 more than the $1.25 million spent by Landrieu.
Market-ratings leader WAFB garnered the biggest piece of the political advertising pie, $1.46 million, while WBRZ reported about $1 million in ad spending by the two major candidates. WVLA and Fox-affiliate WGMB trailed far behind, reporting $134,000 and $97,000 respectively.
“It’s obviously been a year of very big spending,” says Lee Meredith, general manager of WAFB. “It’s not as big as 2008, which was a record year, but that could still change.”
Back in 2008, a presidential election year, Landrieu was also in a hotly contested race to hang on to her senate seat. Her opponent that year was state Treasurer John Kennedy.
Still, even if 2014 spending doesn’t break records in Louisiana, it will go down as one of the most expensive in the nation. According to the Center for Public Integrity, candidates, parties and interest groups have run at least 69,400 TV ads in the Louisiana U.S. Senate race so far with a cost of more than $27 million. That makes the contest the sixth most expensive in the country.
Democrats and their allies have outspent Republicans, running 44,300 ads with an estimated cost of $16.2 million, compared to the GOP’s 25,100 ads, which cost of $10.9 million.
