For Richard Brehm, the revolution was televised.
Five years ago, Brehm was at a Chicago broadcast station, pitching airtime to local politicos. Business was good in a town where politics never sleep.
But over the years, he noticed that local news shows kept slipping in the ratings. CNN, Fox News and MSNBC were picking up a larger share of viewers, and campaigns started chasing them with advertising money.
So Brehm switched channels. He became Comcast Cable’s lone politcal ad salesman in Chicago, and began convincing candidates that cable was the place to be.
The intervening years have proved him right.
According to PQ Media, an independent research firm, cable’s share of the political advertising market climbed threefold from 2000 to 2008 — a surge driven by cable’s comparatively cheap rates and ability to target campaign ads to specific voters.
It’s a stark contrast from Brehm’s days in broadcast, he says.
“I and many of my coworkers were in denial. We didn’t want to admit that cable was a threat,” Brehm says. But “cable has changed light years. Now, you have marquee names in cable that are just as big as broadcast names.”
Brehm’s first dip in the broadcasting world was as a college student at Binghamton University in New York. About two years before he graduated, he was among a group of students who petitioned student government to expand the school’s 10-watt radio station.
“We felt that would make us an ambassador for the university, by having a signal in the town and not just the campus,” he says.
The students got the green light and applied for an FCC permit. Brehm says the signal went live just before his commencement in 1974.
He never left the media industry.
Today, as the area’s go-to guy for campaign advertising on cable, Brehm is riding a national trend that shows political dollars flooding off-broadcast networks.
“Cable has made television affordable to candidates of all sizes,” Brehm says. “Consultants usually measure their effectiveness on cost per voter, and cable offers that ability to target much more closely to the district.”
Broadcast channels still dominate the ratings. But recent campaigns have sent growing amounts of cash to cable providers — sometimes in increments of as little as $500, highlighting cable’s budget appeal.
Campaigns devoted more than $202 million to advertising on cable during the 2008 election cycle, according to PQ Media. That’s about 7.7 percent of campaign spending for advertising across all media, including print, broadcast, satellite and Internet outlets.
In 2000, cable made up just 2.2 percent of the political-advertising market, with $19.3 million in revenue.
Phil Molfese, president of Chicago political-consulting firm Grainger Terry Inc., has worked with Brehm on a host of cable buys. He called Brehm “hyper-responsive.”
“You call at 10 o’clock at night, and he picks up the cell phone. He always has the information you need at his fingertips,” Molfese says. “A campaign’s a 24/7 operation, and he understands that.”
In 2008, Molfese helped John Noverini become the first Democrat ever to win a judgeship in Kane County’s 16th subcircuit.
Two weeks before the election, after a sustained direct-mail campaign, Molfese’s staff spent close to $20,000 on cable spots, sealing Noverini’s election.
“We knew we were in the fight, but that made a big difference,” Molfese says. “We put cable on top of the mail, and that pushed us over the top.”
Roger Kotecki, a Republican Forest Preserve commissioner in DuPage County, was one of the state’s most devoted cable buyers during this primary season. Kotecki’s primary, for a seat that represents about a sixth of the suburban Chicago county, was well suited for cable targeting — which helped him hold off a popular GOP challenger.
“My district has 150,000 people in it,” Kotecki says. “If I buy in the Chicago broadcast media, I’m wasting 97 percent of my money.”
Despite such success stories, Brehm says he doesn’t advise against advertising in broadcast television.
“I still have great respect for many, many friends in the broadcast side,” Brehm says. “I’m not saying don’t buy broadcast. I’m saying, don’t buy broadcast alone.”
Windy Citizen 