Stations Need to Work Harder for Political

With an increasing number of viable alternatives, local broadcasters need to get more aggressive in wooing political advertisers to continue getting their portion of the total spend.

During a political ad panel discussion at the TVB Forward conference, panelists said they expect to see even more political ad spending in 2016 than in 2012, during which local broadcasters saw $3 billion in political money. And while that may mean more money for local TV, the medium is still losing a percentage of its share of political money, particularly to digital platforms and cable, they said. In turn, local TV has to step it up a notch to maintain its share, they said, which means providing campaigns more viewing data.