Danilo Yanich

The Publisher Says:From a certain perspective, the biggest political story of 2016 was how the candidate who bought three-quarters of the political ads lost to the one whose every provocative Tweet set the agenda for the day’s news coverage. With the arrival of bot farms, microtargeted Facebook ads, and Cambridge Analytica, isn’t the age of political ads on local TV coming to a close?

You might think. But you’d be wrong to the tune of $4.4 billion just in 2016. In U.S. elections, there’s a lot more at stake than the presidency. TV spending has gone up dramatically since 2006, for both presidential and down-ballot races for congressional seats, governorships, and state legislatures—and the 2020 campaign shows no signs of bucking this trend. When candidates don’t enjoy the name recognition and celebrity of the presidential contenders, it’s very much business as usual. They rely on the local TV newscasts, watched by 30 million people every day—not Tweets—to convey their messages to an audience more fragmented than ever.

At the same time, the nationalization of news and consolidation of local stations under juggernauts like Nexstar Media and Sinclair Broadcasting mean a decreasing share of time devoted to down-ballot politics—almost 90 percent of 2016’s local political stories focused on the presidential race. Without coverage of local issues and races, ad buys are the only chance most candidates have to get their messages in front of a broadcast audience.

On local TV news, political ads create the reality of local races—a reality that is not meant to inform voters but to persuade them. Voters are left to their own devices to fill in the space between what the ads say—the bought reality—and what political stories used to cover.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Well-written, if academic in tone; impeccably researched and footnoted; a really good book and an important read. I just Can Not Deal. Sickened, outraged, horrified, furious...these are not the emotional states I want to evoke as I enter 2024. Reality is doing it for me, I do not wish to add to my negativity burdens.

A Kindle edition will set you back a cool $31.64, but I will tell you it is worth the money and more...just be in the right frame of mind to get your mind around the scary realities of the present.… (meer)

Buying Reality: Political Ads, Money, and Local Television News by Danilo Yanich is fascinating research on the buying of elections and the lack of interest in either ads or news broadcasts to actually inform the public but to convince or persuade.

I found the information to be very interesting but I was hoping for at least a few more prescriptive ideas to make things better. It seemed like those ideas had as much to do with news departments reaching the younger audience but not so much with actually improving what they then present. TV ads still dominate and will continue to do so, especially for down ticket elections. Even local newscasts focus on national stories (and I use stories loosely since they have turned to entertainment more than being informative) so the ads are often all prospective voters have to go on when deciding local elections. Those ads, of course, tend toward emphasizing generic differences rather than explaining substantive policy differences, so voters by and large go into the voting booths ignorant of who or what they are voting for other than in very broad terms.

I really didn't see anything to be even remotely optimistic about here. What suggestions were made didn't seem to address improving democracy but rather broadening reach. The information was certainly critical of what the system is doing to democracy, how winning rather than governing has become the prime, if not only, objective, and how compromise has completely left government.

Our two party system will destroy this country and I'm not sure anyone or any group is going to be able to stop it. This book certainly presents a lot of good information, but it seems more like a book that future research will use to suggest improvements to the system. While that is important in the big picture, it makes the book a bit of a dry presentation of good information rather than a call for or even just suggestions for making our government work again. That said, I do recommend this to readers who want that information, who wonder how campaign funds are distributed with respect to advertising.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.… (meer)