McCain Campaign Quietly Starts Buying Ad Time On The National Networks

In an unusual move, the McCain campaign has quietly started buying ad time on the national networks, a strategy that for the most part hasn't really been pursued on a large scale in presidential campaigns for at least two decades. Since Friday, the first day after the GOP convention, the McCain campaign has purchased at least $500,000 worth of time on the national nets, with an eye towards advertising nationally during daytime TV shows, says Evan Tracey, who tracks ad buying for the Campaign Media Analysis Group. Among the shows McCain has bought time during, according to Tracey: The Price Is Right, Guiding Lights, and Days of Our Lives. "It's really outside the norm," Tracey says of the McCain camp's buying. "Presidential campaigns have by and large skipped national programming for the last several cycles." Tracey points out that presidential campaigns haven't really invested heavily in national ad buying since the late 1980s.