It started in 1980 with “Laverne & Shirley,” one veteran campaigner recalls.
What we got 30 years later was “Patty & Dino” and “Jaime & Denny” and a supporting cast of candidates that grabbed our TVs and didn’t let go until just a few days ago.
Boy, were there ever a ton of political ads on local television sets last month.
And that’s not just the opinion of a campaign-weary viewer: That’s Nielsen talking.
According to the national ratings service, the Portland area ranked third among 210 U.S. television markets for highest saturation of political advertising from Oct. 1 through Oct. 31.
It amounted to 25,527 political advertisements on Portland’s local broadcast television outlets — an average of more than 800 a day — during October.
Vancouver’s Ron Rasmussen can remember when a channel-flicking television viewer didn’t find the same campaign ad on four different stations.
That’s because he was part of the first effort to buy an ad for a local candidate on a Portland TV station, Rasmussen said.
Republican Sid Morrison was taking on Democratic incumbent Jim McCormack for this area’s seat in the U.S. House of Representatives back in 1980.
Part of Morrison’s successful campaign involved writing a check to KATU, Portland’s ABC affiliate. The money — somewhere around $12,000, Rasmussen said — bought three ads on one of the most popular shows of its era, “Laverne & Shirley.” The campaign wanted spots at the beginning, the middle and the end of Channel 2’s telecast, Rasmussen said.
No special effects, no voice-of-doom narration: just Morrison talking into the camera.
“Not like they do it now,” said Rasmussen, former Clark County Republican chairman. “It was just a short bio.”
High saturation
The Portland area trailed only two Ohio television markets on the saturation scale. Neilsen says a total of 117,208 commercials aired on Portland TV outlets in October, and the 25,527 political spots amounted to 21.78 percent of all TV advertising in the market. Only Cleveland (23.44 percent) and Columbus (23.37 percent) had higher saturations.
High-profile races on the Oregon ballot contributed to the Portland advertising blitz, but there’s no doubt that Washington voters were targeted by some well-financed campaigns. With 26,071 campaign spots in October — 19.47 percent of all advertising in the market — Seattle ranked No. 5 nationally in saturation of political advertising.
Mississippi politicians must have gotten off pretty cheaply, by the way. With 827 political ads in October, the Jackson market had the nation’s lowest saturation rate at 1 percent.
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