KSNV, the NBC affiliate for Las Vegas, may be sorry to see the election end, according to a report by Bloomberg Businessweek.
The report said Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group estimated the presidential campaign alone will spend at least $1 billion on TV ads this year. For KSNV, that meant 80 percent of its ad inventory was campaign related.
From Oct. 1 to Oct. 21, more ads aired there than in any other market except Denver, according to the Wesleyan Media Project. Democrats ran 4,551 of the spots vs. 3,506 by Republicans. Since the start of 2012, no other station in the U.S. has run more ads than KSNV, according to CMAG. The station has broadcast 20,282 political spots so far this year. “What did we used to do with our time?” asks (KSNV vice president and general manager Lisa) Howfield.
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While some are calling it the “Obama-Romney stimulus package of 2012”, the money is welcome news for local TV stations who operate on a two-year business cycle with even years being more profitable than the often-lean odd years.
[Las Vegas Review-Journal]“Quite honestly, it helps us catch up with some of our overhead costs that have been hard to keep up with.” Brad Adgate, a senior vice president for Horizon Media. “This isn’t found money,” says Adgate. “If there’s any area they would invest in, it would be local news websites. That’s the next battleground.”