The 2014 midterm election is barreling toward us, which means, among other things, a dramatic uptick in political commercials supporting a candidate or a cause. The FCC recently started posting information about the specifics of these local ad buys, as far as who paid for what and how much they spent on it. The reports are apparently an incomprehensible mess of PDF files, but the folks at the Washington Post tried to sift through them anyway to figure out the most popular shows to advertise on for each political party. The results will undoubtedly confirm your deeply held beliefs, regardless of exactly what those beliefs are. Politics, always fun.
Here are some of the highlights from the past couple months. Check out the Post for the full results, complete with pie charts.
Shows With More Republican Ads
– Big Bang Theory
– Modern Family
– Dr. Phil
– Fargo
– Saturday Night Live
– The View
– Rachel Ray
– Jeopardy
Shows With More Democratic Ads
– The Blacklist
– Community
– Scandal
– Reality shows (Big Brother, Survivor, The Voice)
– Morning shows (Today, Good Morning America)
– Late-night shows (Letterman, Kimmel, Fallon)
The most amazing part of the results, however, is that if the Washington Post’s figures are to be believed, one of the shows with the highest percentage of advertising dollars from Independent candidate is Family Feud. I have no idea what to extrapolate from that, but it is my new favorite fact.
