I. Introduction
Television ads are a staple of modern political campaigns, the most expensive and
most discussed aspect of many contests. TV ads demand disproportionate amounts of
campaign funds (Fritz and Morris 1992; Morris and Gamache 1994), and attract
disproportionate attention (Jamieson 1996). TV ads are treated as news by the media,
even by print and radio reporters. The end result is that ads are frequently regarded as the
sign of a serious campaign. A candidate who is not on TV is barely in the race.
Television cannot be equally prominent in all contests. Presidential candidates,
who are on the ballot everywhere, strategically choose the media markets in which to
advertise (Strömberg 2002). Often corners of battleground states are deliberately
neglected because purchasing airtime there is too expensive or inefficient (Krasno and
Green 2005). Conventional wisdom has it that campaigns in big cities like Los Angeles
are dominated by direct mail and radio, not television. And, of course, candidates near
the bottom of the ballot can only rarely afford to advertise on television. Nonetheless,
TV commercials are thought to be fairly ubiquitous in competitive federal elections.
These sorts of fluctuations in TV usage arise from the inefficiency and costs of
television advertising. Media markets do not conveniently follow the lines of electoral
districts. Congressional candidates who buy time in New York City are paying to reach
their own voters, as well as viewers in thirty-five other House districts. Their size makes
airtime in markets like Chicago, Los Angeles and New York very pricey. Thus,
Goldenberg and Traugott (1984) found that House candidates in 1978 were likelier to
1
I thank the Pew Charitable Trusts for financial support for this project and the University of Wisconsin’s
Television Advertising Project for data.
2
Convention