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Cable news shows known to be seen by the President of the United States, such as MSNBC's Morning Joe and Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, are raising their advertising rates:
The ad rates for "Morning Joe" have more than doubled post-election, according to one veteran media buyer. Trump, who reportedly watches the show most mornings, has a close relationship with "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough, and they talk regularly. Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor" and other prime-time programs on Fox News have boosted their rates about 50 percent. Trump also is a frequent viewer of the network's prime-time shows.
"The president's media habits are so predictable, advertisers migrate to those areas," said one media buyer. One prominent D.C. consultant said some of his clients, including a big bank and major pharmaceutical company, were negotiating this week to buy ads on "O'Reilly" and "Morning Joe" because they knew they had a good chance of reaching the president. Trump has also been known to respond directly to what he's watching on television and tweet statistics and topics he sees on-air. Those tweets often drive news coverage during the day.
Also at The Atlantic.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 09 2017, @12:16PM
So I'm rejecting this as bullcrap. If ad rates are really up there is a different explanation, one that at least almost makes sense..
Folks, this is how motivated skepticism works.
When reality collides with ideology, people search for any possible alternate explanation and when they are unable to find one, they simply deny reality.
Everybody likes to think they are rational evaluators of facts, but fundamentally that is rarely the case. Anyone can be skeptical of claims they don't want to be true. It takes real intelligence to doubt your own tightly held beliefs. Seems like that is beyond jmorris's abilities.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by jmorris on Thursday February 09 2017, @01:36PM
No, this is how one should evaluate an unsourced, undocumented claim in a #FakeNews product like Politico or the Atlantic. If it sounds like bullcrap it is almost certainly bullcrap. If it doesn't sound like bullcrap look for a primary source to confirm it before deciding it isn't bullcrap. Media accounts count as primary sources at Wikipedia, which is why they are useless btw; they aren't and haven't really been such for decades. The media often DO have video or other primary sources but beware of stealth edits, etc.
But after sleeping on the idea I can see where there might be a nugget of truth buried in the shit here. Morning Joe is a show with no ratings on a network nobody watches so anything can juice zero. But O'Really is not even playing for #1 in Cable News and hasn't for years, it is in and out of #1 for Cable TV in general. No way the ad rates on a ratings monster like that are up just because one person watches.
(Score: 2) by jcross on Thursday February 09 2017, @02:36PM
I agree that the purpose of the ad buys (if the story checks out) is likely not to influence Trump's decisions, which as you say would be better done by arranging an in-person meeting or hiring lobbyists or whatever. But there is another possible reason, which is that the buyers are attempting to become parasites on Trump's free media machine. I assume his twitter feed is diligently watched by a huge number of journalists and bloggers, all trying to figure out how to be the first to turn that tweet into a headline or a scoop. This free publicity was, I think, a big help to his campaign, and it's something you really can't just buy.
So thinking like an advertiser, I might be able to make an ad that generates Trump-level publicity, but to do that the ad's content is going to have to be really controversial, and the strategy could easily backfire. However, there's a safer, cheaper way, and that's to make a more ordinary ad, sprinkle it with Trump sauce, and watch it spread through the media (and of course facebook) like wildfire. For instance, if I want to appeal to Trump-haters, I just need to pitch my ad to provoke him to tweet something about it that sounds racist, and magically this one ad buy translates into a firestorm in the lefty side of the media. With any luck the righty side of the media ignores the whole thing, so there's almost no collateral damage to that side of my business. Meanwhile the ad itself is seen as laudable by lefties, who resolve to buy my product because I'm bravely standing up to the man.
If I want to appeal to Trump-lovers, it's pretty much the same idea, except the ad is targeted to provoke a favorable tweet, perhaps by touting how hard my company has worked to keep jobs in the US. The ad by itself can be uncontroversial until Trump endorses it, at which point the whole issue gets picked apart in excruciating detail by the press. Consider Carrier and their parent company United Technologies, which I doubt had very much profile before Trump decided to make an example of them. Trump-lovers can see a strong leader guiding a company away from an anti-American action, Trump-haters can focus on Trump's apparent conflicts of interest and other corruption, and libertarians get a neat example of a company being bullied by authoritarian policies. And throughout all of that, nobody seems to hate Carrier itself too much, so the publicity could be a net win. Sure, this type of plan is a long shot, but viral media pays out just like the darlings of venture capitalists: rarely but very richly.
It's an interesting strategy, but I must say I look forward to a time when mainstream news stories don't have to be anointed with the president's name to get coverage. There are a lot of important things going on in the USA and abroad that have little to do with any politician, moral panic, or threat to the public safety, but it seems as if most people would rather not pay attention to those things at the moment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 09 2017, @08:06PM
> Media accounts count as primary sources at Wikipedia, which is why they are useless btw;
lolwut?
Because something meets wikipedia's requirements that automatically invalidates it.
Logic!