Cable nabs a bigger slice of political pie

Broadcast television will still get the vast majority of political spending this year.

But cable is poised to see the biggest gains, behind only the internet.

After broadcast, cable will get the second-most political ad dollars this year, $938.8 million, according to a forecast by Borrell Associates, the Williamsburg, Va., local advertising tracking firm.

That's double the $468 million spent in 2008.

This year cable will account for 9.5 percent of all political ad spending, just ahead of No. 3 radio at 8.3 percent.

Cable has lagged well behind broadcast in political spending largely because broadcast spot TV allows for narrow targeting while reaching a broader audience than cable spot.

Political spending is nearly always based on geography, and cable networks have fewer minutes per hour of local advertising than broadcast networks.

That has often made them an afterthought for both local and national campaigns.

But cable is getting more creative in its approach to woo political advertisers.

Just yesterday ESPN struck a deal that will increase the amount of political ads appearing on its network this fall.

The network put aside some of the inventory it had planned to sell during the upfront and instead sold that time to ad sales firm NCC Media.

NCC Media, in turn, will sell that time to super PACs, candidates and political parties at an undisclosed mark-up.

The agreement includes inventory on "SportsCenter" and "Monday Night Football," cable's No. 1 program.

It's the sort of innovative deal that could be copied during coming elections by other cable networks, which are eager to get in on the windfall gained by broadcast networks every two years.

Borrell predicts that total political spending on broadcast TV this year will be $5.64 billion, up 31 percent from $4.32 billion four years ago.

This is the first presidential election following the Supreme Court's decision lifting a ban on political spending by corporations, and the dollars flowing into the super PACs and candidates' own coffers has been astounding.

Mitt Romney's campaign raised a campaign-record $106 million last month, more than double what 2008 Republican candidate John McCain raised during June four years ago.

And while President Barack Obama's fundraising efforts have lagged his 2008 efforts, he still brought in more than $130 million the past two months.

Not all of that money will go to television. Online will see the biggest growth of any media, up 516 percent to $159 million.

And newspapers will be fourth behind broadcast, cable and radio with just under $700 million.

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Addendum: This story, as initially published, did not make clear that it will be the MSOs that reap much of the cable windfall for political spending, not the cable networks themselves.

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