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SALT LAKE CITY — The amount of money raised and spent during the 2012 election is unprecedented. TV ad time on many stations, like KSL, is booked solid — unless someone is willing to pay extra for the ad time.
The campaign of Peter Cooke, who is running for governor, reserved some ads at a lower rate. But another campaign — that of Congressional candidate Mia Love — agreed to pay nearly five times more for those spots, a sum the Cooke campaign could not match.
2012 will go down as a political year to remember in Utah, thanks to a contentious $10 million dollar 4th Congressional District race that's seen a flood of ads from outside groups. Various campaigns are competing for ad time, which is now completely booked.
A victim of the squeeze is Democrat Peter Cooke. Several weeks ago, his campaign reserved 15 spots at the lowest rate only to see those slots bought out, which the Cooke campaign couldn't match.
In some cases it is a little bit of a bidding war that might happen, truthfully. 'There's no more room at the inn' is what I've been saying for a while now.
–KSL-TV National Sales Coordinator Craig Lewis
"We fully expected to be bumped somewhat and had put money aside to handle that," said campaign coordinator Lee Conant, "but the amount of money that's coming in, the amount of advertising that's being purchased has pushed that out of sight."
Campaigns that can afford it, like Cooke's opponent, the governor, and Orrin Hatch reserved many spots at the highest rate, so they can't be bumped.
"This is an historic year here in Utah," said Thomas Wright. "I've never seen this amount of activity on the airwaves. I think people are kind of getting sick of it, but only five days to go and everyone is trying to cram their message in before the end here."
Which presents another big challenge to campaigns that can't afford the non-preemptible rate.
Related:
Hatch breaks record spending $12M on campaign
Sen. Orrin Hatch has spent what appears to be a Utah-record $12 million on his bid for a seventh term in office."They're paying a lot more for the individual spots that were bumped for the Cooke campaign," said KSL-TV National Sales Coordinator Craig Lewis. "In some cases it is a little bit of a bidding war that might happen, truthfully. ‘There's no more room at the inn' is what I've been saying for a while now."
"We only have 15 spots in a program sometimes," Lewis continued, "and when all 15 of those spots are political candidates there's no place else to put anyone. This is extremely unprecedented territory for us."
Besides Cooke spots, Jim Matheson and Mia Love ads have also been crowded out by other campaigns ready to pay more. Additionally, campaign ads coming from super PACs have been restricted for the past two weeks on KSL, since the ad inventory has already been booked for candidate ads.
