In 2000 those transfers soared to record levels, not just because politicaldonations from wealthy contributors were more generous than ever, but alsobecause television stations were more brazen than ever in jacking up their adrates to exploit the unprecedented campaign-driven spike in demand. As a result,political advertisers spent up to an estimated $1 billion on televisionbroadcasting last year--five times more than what they spent in 1980, even afteradjusting for inflation. "The rates are becoming extortionist," Jim Jordan,executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said lastfall as he watched the cost of his political ads rise from one day to the next. Television stations routinely engaged in this gouging despite a 30-year-oldlaw--known as the "lowest unit charge" (LUC) provision--designed to protectcandidates from such price spikes. Like so many other campaign finance laws, thisone has simply collapsed into its own loopholes. According to a comprehensivereview of more than 16,000 candidate ad sales logs at 10 television stations inmedium-size and large markets, candidates paid, on average, 65 percent more fortheir ads in the closing months of last year's campaign than the lowestcandidate rate published on the station's own rate card. Parties and issuegroups, which are not entitled to LUC protection, were hit even harder; in busymarkets, their ad rates doubled and sometimes tripled between Labor Day andelection day. (See www.bettercampaigns.org for detailed results from this study,which was conducted by the Alliance for Better Campaigns, a public-interest groupthat I direct.) These price spikes ought to be part of the forthcoming Senate debate, forthey underscore a fundamental quandary that reformers face: It's more expensivethan ever to run for office, and any legislation that reduces the supply ofpolitical money without also reducing the demand for it is not a prescription fora stable campaign finance system. The McCain-Feingold bill would ban soft money,the large donations that have the greatest potential to corrupt. It's the rightfirst step, but it's only a first step. If reformers want to create campaignsthat are more competitive, if they want to bring down barriers for candidates whoare neither wealthy nor well financed, and if they want to restrain the nonstopmoney chase, they also need to find a way to relieve the demand-side pressures.And the obvious place to look is at the greatest source of the problem:commercial television broadcasting. The United States is one of just a few countries that doesn't requiretelevision stations--as a condition of receiving their government licenses--toset aside free airtime during the height of the campaign season for candidatesand parties to communicate to voters. It's almost certainly the onlycountry in the world that permits its television industry to profiteer onpolitical campaigns, and to do so by using billions of dollars' worth of airwavesthey have been given, free of charge, in return for a commitment to serve thepublic interest. These anomalies are a testament to the broadcast industry's clout on CapitolHill. "I've taken them on many times," McCain likes to say, "and my record isunblemished by victory." The version of the campaign finance reform bill that heand Feingold will bring to the floor does not contain a provision mandating freeairtime for candidates. The original version did, but the authors had to scrap itin 1997, after the National Association of Broadcasters spent two years andmillions of dollars lobbying the senators' colleagues. (If you don't recallseeing or hearing much about this lobbying blitz, it may be because thenetworks' newscasts didn't report it.) McCain remains determined to move forward with a provision for free airtimeand plans to introduce a separate bill later in the year. While this follow-upmeasure won't have an easy ride, the television industry is facing some newsources of resentment in Washington that could pierce its aura of invincibility.Lately broadcasters have come to be seen as "spectrum hogs" who squat on $70billion worth of mostly unused airspace that Congress awarded them in 1996, freeof charge, to facilitate their transition to digital technology. Five yearslater, the much-hyped high-definition television sets have yet to dent the U.S.consumer market, while the United States has fallen behind Europe and Japan indeveloping the next generation of wireless Internet technologies--largely becausethere isn't enough spectrum left to go around. Another potential sore point is the campaign-season gouging. Purely from thevantage point of self-preservation, the high cost of modern politics is not anentirely unhappy development for incumbents; anything that raises the tablestakes is tougher on challengers than on them. Still, no one in Congress likesdialing for dollars around the clock. And nobody likes being played for a chump. The LUC system, enacted by Congress in 1971, was supposed to ensure thatcandidates would receive the same volume discount rates that television stationsprovided to their best year-round product advertisers. As a mechanism to controlprices, it's been a misadventure from the get-go. The problem is that a station'sLUC rates come with a catch: Ads can be bumped to a different time if anotheradvertiser is willing to pay more for the designated slot. This arrangement maybe acceptable to product advertisers, whose goal is to build brand loyalty overthe long haul. But it's not acceptable to candidates. In the fast-paced thrustand parry of a political campaign, they need assurances that their ads will runas scheduled. Stations charge a premium for such "nonpreemptible time," and as election day approaches, these premiums rise. In recent years, the LUC system has been undermined still further by theexplosive growth in issue advertising by political parties and interest groups.These ads are not entitled to LUC protection; so when they flood into the marketin the campaign's closing weeks, stations have a field day. Consider the memothat an ad sales representative for KHQ-TV, the CBS affiliate in Spokane,Washington, sent last September to Democratic media consultant Peter Fenn: "Asyou might know, the state of WA is getting hit pretty hard with political," itbegan. "Activity is a lot heavier than the station had anticipated and yourschedules are already getting bumped. Look at the following pages, which detailyour orders & my proposals to get back what we can." Those following pagesadvised Fenn that the price he'd been quoted in August for a 30-second issue adon KHQ's late local news, $600, was being increased to $1,800. These spikes have a ricochet effect on candidate ads as well. "Soft money andissue ads have become the tail that wags the dog," says Democratic consultantNeil Oxman. "In the old days, the candidate rate was pegged to the rate that astation's best commercial customer got. Now the candidate rate is pegged to therates that the soft money political advertiser pays. Yes, the candidate can get adiscount from that rate, but it's a discount on a rate that has gone through theroof." As recently as a decade ago, political advertising accounted for just 3percent of the gross revenues of the typical network-affiliated local station inan election year. In 2000 it accounted for nearly 10 percent. Last year localstations sold more political ads than they did fast-food ads. While the television industry's paycheck from politics keeps growing,its commitment to substantive coverage of campaigns keeps shriveling. Theshrinking sound bite, the scaled-back coverage of conventions and debates, thefocus on little else besides the campaign horse race--these have all becomefamiliar criticisms. Veteran ABC political correspondent Sam Donaldson worriedaloud last year that his network's nightly newscasts had simply "forfeited thefield" of campaign coverage to the niche environs of all-news cable channels. Andthe landscape is even more barren at the local level, where most stations don'teven employ a political correspondent. So if candidates want to be on broadcast television--and they do--their onlyoption is to buy their way, 30 seconds at a time. In a media-saturated worldwhere everybody's audience keeps getting sliced thinner, broadcast television isthe closest thing to a public square. For political candidates, it remains themedium of choice: In 2000, according to advertising industry analysts, more than80 cents of every political-advertising dollar went to television broadcasting.A mandate for free airtime could relieve this pressure not just by providingcandidates and parties with no-cost vouchers good for advertising time ontelevision but also by requiring TV stations to air a minimum amount ofcandidate-centered news and public-affairs programming (such as debates, publicforums, and interviews) in the culminating weeks of the campaign. McCain's new bill proposes a "National Political Broadcast Time Bank,"financed by a spectrum-usage fee imposed on broadcasters, that would distribute$750 million worth of political-ad vouchers per election cycle (roughly whatcandidates and parties spent on television in 2000). A third of the voucherswould go to candidates for federal office who raised funds from a thresholdnumber of small donors and who agreed to voluntary campaign-spending limits.Two-thirds would go to political parties that agreed not to accept softmoney--roughly replacing the nearly $500 million they raised in soft money in1999 and 2000 combined. In effect this would eliminate a "dirty" resource infavor of a clean one and would keep parties where they belong: in the businessof helping their candidates get elected. The bill would also require that stations air issue-based programming at leasttwo hours a week in the six weeks preceding a general election. The best antidoteto a money-soaked political culture dominated by special interests is an informedpublic. Opening up the airwaves to this sort of robust discourse would help armthe public with the tools it needs to choose its leaders. Television stations will complain that the bill infringes upon their FirstAmendment rights and is a threat to their property. But these arguments don'thold up. Since the passage of the Communications Act of 1934, broadcasters havebeen treated under law as public trustees as well as private commercialenterprises. They have been given free and exclusive use of a scarce resource inreturn for a pledge to serve the public interest. The Supreme Court has made itclear time and again that Congress can construe this pledge to include specific,enforceable obligations such as the ones in the McCain bill. Members of Congresssimply haven't risen to the task. Only when they do will broadcasters be reinedin from gouging them, their challengers, and the entire democratic process.
