By Ravi Somaiya
This US election has proved that everything is bigger in the United States - including politics. Take advertising, for instance. On TV, radio and even in computer games Barack Obama has so far out-advertised John McCain by three-and-a-half to one, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group, spending an average of $3.5 million a day - not including the 30-minute adverts he bought on most of the major networks last week at a rumored cost of $3 million.
But even if the candidates aren't paying for airtime, they're still on TV. The final presidential debate was watched by more than 60 million people, and the cable news networks CNN and MSNBC, which specialize in political coverage, are up 165 percent and 81 percent in primetime respectively as compared with the same quarter last year.
Other cable comedians also profited from campaign missteps on both sides, with Comedy Central's satirical The Daily Show and The Colbert Report averaging 1.8 and 1.4 million viewers a show, both up 16 percent year on year. The Daily Show had its highest-ever rating, 3.6 million, when Obama appeared on it last week. David Letterman got his highest viewing figures in three years when McCain, who had stood him up previously, returned to face the music in mid-October, attracting 6.5 million viewers.
According to Bill Wolff, the executive producer of the Rachel Maddow Show, a new political show that MSNBC launched to immediate primetime ratings success: "2004 was a big deal, but this is incredible." Wolff thinks the rise in figures across the board comes from a widespread dislike of the Bush administration and an eagerness to engage in choosing new leaders as a result.
And it isn't just TV shows that have benefited - news and political websites have enjoyed huge increases too. Politico.com has seen a 219 percent increase in unique users year on year, according to the ratings company Nielsen. The websites of the LA Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Boston Globe, ABC and Fox News are up around 100 percent, and the New York Times, Google News and MSNBC Digital Network have increased traffic by around 40 percent.
"The Web lends itself to immediacy, so when people have a passionate and visceral reaction to something they see, and they are thinking about it, they can go right to a website," says Chuck Schilling, the research director for agency and media analytics at Nielsen.
But what will happen when the election is over? Will traffic hold up? Schilling thinks that news websites, and video clip sites such as those for The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live, may be able to retain some of their new users after the election.
(China Daily via The Guardian November 5, 2008)
