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By Paul S. Maxwell
Cable did pretty good this political season (don't have the statistics, yet--though we'll get them and print them soon--writing this before the election...and I don't have the results of anything, including the World Serious).
But cable can do better. After all, more people watch cable than broadcasters...and cable can out-local the local over-the-airheads...
Just look at some of the truly cool stuff cable did this year:
- Significant local carriage of local contests on the various local cable news channels.
- Local debates.
- Local lotteries. (Just kidding; but why not? Lotteries on election outcomes like online? Doing it, of course, online where its "legal.")
- Innovative new technology promotions as public service such as Comcast Colorado with its VOD package of interviews with Senate candidates.
- Cable network dominance of the running debates. (OK...cable networks aren't just cable...but when made local, they are!) Arguably the two most important folks in cable in '04 are Fox News' Roger Ailes and Comedy Central's Jon Stewart. (Think I'm kidding?)
My point: Now is the time to plan for '06 congressional contests ... so:
- Take a pol to dinner every week...beginning with the local Republican and Democratic Party chairmen.
- Court future candidates by staging--a year to the date ahead of 11/07/06--a candidates' "how to advertise on cable and win your election" day. (Note to Sean Cunningham: Sound like a sensible program for CAB to develop for local use?)
- Offer "free" websites for candidates on your local home pages...organized by contests.
- Designate a regional ad VP to learn how to translate the '06 successes into even more in the presidential year of '08.
- Designate, in markets where a single system or major interconnect dominate, a public policy maven to get to know every single local pol. Lots of them graduate to bigger things; and bigger ad budgets.
- Cover them locally. Over-the-airheads win by default...even though they hardly cover the local guys anymore! Cable can out-hustle them at every step.
OK? Get with it!
Meanwhile, some "predictions" (you may send "told-you-so" or "how-stupid-could-you-be" or "wow!" e-mails to me at ):
- The Supreme Court still hasn't decided the presidential election as of the day you read this. (But Dick Cheney said, from his bunker somewhere, that he was in charge anyway. Al Haig called to congratulate him; but the White House switchboard operator couldn't find him.) Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin also volunteered to become America's "temporary" leader.
- Only two incumbent representatives were defeated...out of almost 30 (really) contested seats. Odd, isn't it, that only 30 of 435 were "at risk" of changing hands. Less than 7%. Gerrymandering has run rampant. (An aside: Methinks that's at the root of America's split personality...and the cause of the rancor. Safe seats reward partisans. The cure, in my view, is a constitutional amendment to force the every-10-year, following the Census, redistricting process to be carried out by an independent bipartisan commission.)
- The Senate split 50-50.
- Every single congressman and senator from California submitted a new bill to allow "foreign-born" citizens of 10 years or more to be eligible to become president.
- Fox, CNN, MSNBC and ABC's digital news channel, not to mention Voom's HD-News, haven't yet left the blue vs. red coloring maps since the night of Nov. 2. Unfortunately, everyone in America has tuned to Al-Jazeera...where, also unfortunately, all the action is.
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