Political ads woo a weary electorate

Money pours in for close races

Calling a hotly contested state a battleground is a cliche. But turn on your television in North Carolina and you can certainly see sniping.

There are the two old men in rocking chairs lamenting "that's not the Liddy Dole I know." There's the yapping dog representing "Fibber Hagan." Garbage barges, Joe the Plumber and armored trucks hauling off your money are some of the stars as political commercials clog the airwaves before Nov. 4.

While ads are part of any election season, North Carolina may be getting an unprecedented number this year because of heavy spending in the state by supporters of Barack Obama and John McCain.

"None of us expected to have three unbelievably close races like we're having," Barry Leffler, general manager of Raleigh NBC affiliate WNCN, said Friday. "Nobody expected the state to be in play in the presidential race."

North Carolina is one of about eight states where voters are split and political watchers believe the election could be decided. Well over $10 million has been spent on presidential ad time here. Spending is also heavy in the state's U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races.

Sometimes the sheer volume and negative tone of campaign ads turn voters off.

Eugene Miller of Raleigh called the seemingly constant barrage from both sides "confusing, irritating, maddening."

"I expect them to say that, 'My opponent is no good, a cheat and a liar, is going to raise your taxes,'" said Miller, who's retired. "The whole tax issue is a sham ... neither party has spoken to the fact that, hey, the national debt is out of control."

Some just tune out the ads altogether.

"I tend to turn the channel when they're on," Robin Rose of Charlotte said Friday after casting a ballot at Central Piedmont Community College.

A particularly annoying ad, she said, was for lieutenant governor candidate Robert Pittenger. It featured pop-up pigs wearing tuxedos and smoking cigars, acting like pirates and drinking tea. "I'm an intelligent person. I don't need cartoon pigs to help me make up my mind," Rose said.

Political ad dollars are good news for stations, which, like other media, are suffering as spending on advertising plunges nationwide. Automotive ads, a key sector for television, are off about 25 percent this year. Spending in most other categories is down, too.

But the volume of political ads also squeezes local advertisers, who find it difficult to buy time for their ads or have them ads bumped until after the election.

"If you didn't get something in a long time ago, it's not getting in," said Richard Halliburton, president of the American Advertising Federation Charlotte and senior media buyer at Specialized Media Services.

TV advertising tends to be a commodity business in which supply and demand dictate rates. When stations have lots of ad spots to sell, rates tend to drop, and vice-versa.

Halliburton said he has noticed a trend toward more political advertising on the Internet. He's not surprised.

"When you look down through advertising in history, it has gone where the eyeballs are," he said. "Billboards followed cars."

Media habits are now shifting toward computers and cell phones, particularly among the young, he said. "Mobile phones are going to be the be-all and end-all for reaching people. We have to figure out how to crack that."

(Staff writer Samuel Spies contributed to this report.)