Charlie Crist's fall TV ad blitz is heaviest in the nation (FL Gov's race)

[seafan]

Crist's fall TV ad blitz is heaviest in the nation

BY MARC CAPUTO
Nov. 04, 2006

If all the 30-second ads that have run on behalf of the Republican governor candidate were played nonstop one after another, they would last more than a week -- making Crist the most advertised candidate in the nation from Aug. 1 through Oct. 15, according to an analysis by Nielsen Monitor-Plus, a division of Nielsen Media Research.
Total number of times Crist ads aired in Florida during that period: 21,214. That's more than double that of Democratic rival Jim Davis. And it's even more than California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's ad buys.
Crist's accomplishment -- fueled by the Republican Party of Florida, which has picked up much of the tab -- astounds and worries Democrats. Yet it also gives them some hope.

''This shows just how much Republicans are nervous about the national environment being so against them. They know the road to the White House goes through Florida, so this is where they're spending their money,'' said Mo Elleithee, a Democratic strategist who worked on former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno's failed 2002 bid for governor.
Throughout the nation, Tampa was the most politically advertised media market, owing to Crist and Davis' home bases there and hot congressional races. The nation's seventh-ranked: the West Palm Beach area, still in South Florida but without the price tag of the Miami-Fort Lauderdale market, one of the most expensive in the nation.

''Republicans have spent all this money, and run all these ads,'' Elleithee said, ``but Crist is not as far out front as you would have thought.''

snip

Crist was not just the most touted politician on TV, he was the fourth-most-advertised political brand behind the Republican National Committee, the Democratic National Committee and the proponents and opponents of a California cigarette tax initiative, Lane said.
--snip
Lane said Nielsen crunched the numbers by using monitoring towers that check television stations. Lab technicians analyzed the light and sound of commercials as if each were a unique fingerprint that could be counted every time it ran. When a new commercial ran, it was cataloged as a new fingerprint.

snip

But Fred Davis (of Strategic Perception) cautioned that there was only so much of a politician's ''brand'' that people want to buy.

''Once you reach that saturation point, does an extra hundred commercials or $1 million really make a difference?'' he asked. ``At a certain point, people might stop paying attention.''

(Emphasis added)

[David__77]

1. I wish they'd played the closet homosexual card.

Crist is easy prey, but no one pulled the trigger. Shame.

[Nimrod2005]

2. And he will lose....