Hulu’s On First?

By Nathan L. Gonzales

It’s hard to imagine a place with millions of eyeballs and no political advertising.

Last cycle, the on-demand video Web site Hulu.com was only in its infancy, but with a growing audience, it could be difficult to ignore in future elections. This year, there has been a trickle of online video advertising on other news Web sites, and Hulu could be next.

“It’s another good way to get people who are spending more and more of their time on the Internet,” said Democratic media consultant Julian Mulvey, who is working with Boston Celtics co-owner Steve Pagliuca in the special Massachusetts Senate primary on Dec. 8.

Last week, the Pagliuca campaign began running 15-second pre-roll ads (video ads running before desired content) on CNN.com across the Bay State.

The National Rifle Association ran 15-second pre-roll ads on FoxNews.com in selected markets in this year’s gubernatorial race in Virginia.

“More people are watching TV with a laptop on their lap,” said Republican media consultant Brad Todd, whose firm OnMessage Inc. produced the NRA spots. “You’d like to be in both places and catch them in both directions.”

In the future, media consultants may be wrestling with potential voters who are watching television on their computer with the regular TV set off. Hulu is one place the voters are likely to go.

Launched in March 2007 as a joint venture with heavyweight media partners including NBC Universal, News Corp., which owns Fox, and Disney-ABC, Hulu has grown to the 30th most-visited Web site in the United States, according to Alexa, a Web information company. Hulu has more than 5.5 million page views per day, CubeStat, which follows Web traffic, has found.

On Hulu, people can view episodes or clips from hundreds of television shows (including “The Daily Show,” “The Office” and “The Simpsons”), and movies for free because of commercials placed before and throughout the programming.

Thus far, Hulu has been a refuge from the deluge of candidate ads. There have been no political ads on the site, according to a representative of the company, unless you count the 1988 Willie Horton ad and a few dozen other historic ads in the site’s archives.

Just as they do with television advertising, campaigns can target geographically and they can attempt to target demographically by choosing specific programs or Web sites.

But there are some unique advertising options on Hulu. Campaigns could utilize users’ demographic information, if they’ve registered with the site, and feedback on their ads in order to fine-tune future buys. Also, instead of a traditional 15- or 30-second ad, a campaign could sponsor an entire show and pay for the rights to blanket a particular episode with all video and banner advertising.

Jean-Paul Colaco, Hulu’s senior vice president of advertising, told Fast Company magazine in its November profile of the company that blanketing doubles recall rates compared to traditional broadcast advertising. It also allows Hulu to charge more for its ads, potentially affecting campaign budgets.

Unlike Pagliuca or other personally wealthy candidates, most campaigns are dealing with finite resources. Running pre-roll ads on the Internet are left to campaigns with “Cadillac budgets,” in the words of one Democratic consultant, and that tactic is often scrapped at the first sign of fundraising difficulty.

All campaigns have to balance cost, affordability and viewership when it comes to ad buys, and there is concern that money spent on Hulu is wasted because the ads reach young people who are less likely to vote.

Forty-one percent of Hulu viewers are ages 18-34 and 39 percent are ages 35-49, according to Quantcast. Even if older voters start watching Hulu, there are other proven tactics to reach them, one Democratic strategist said.

Another challenge for consultants is finding a race where using Hulu and other Web sites will work effectively. Even though Hulu starts with millions of viewers, once it starts breaking down to the state or Congressional district level, then registered voters, then likely voters, the slice of the pie gets smaller and smaller and advertising on the site becomes less efficient.

Online video advertising is not immune to some of the challenges that ad-makers have with television, such as the mute button or multi-tasking. Rather than changing the channel, a person might be e-mailing in another window during the ad.

For now, candidates who can’t afford it may choose to run a single ad on Hulu in an effort to get traditional media attention. Political reporters are more likely to write a story about a produced ad (particularly the novelty of an ad on Hulu) rather than regurgitate another news release.

Some media consultants only talk casually about Hulu around the kitchen table with their kids rather than talking strategy on a conference call with a candidate.

“This cycle, it’s considered,” said Democratic media consultant John Lapp of Ralston Lapp Media about advertising on Hulu, “where last cycle it was thrown out out-of-hand.” For all campaigns, it comes down to priorities.

“It has a place and has some value, but it wouldn’t be where I start,” said Paula Hambrick, a media buyer for Chicago-based Democratic consulting firm Adelstein Liston. “You still have to do the fundamentals.”

Campaign strategists agree that broadcast television advertising is still the critical component of a successful campaign.

For example, Pagliuca’s $10,000 ad buy on CNN.com pales in comparison to the millions of dollars he’s spending on broadcast television. Online ad spending (including nonpolitical ads) is growing by more than 40 percent annually and totals about $1 billion, but it’s minuscule compared with $46 billion for broadcast ad revenue, according to Fast Company.

“It was a lot easier to be a media planner in 1952,” Hambrick joked. “Everyone wants to be on top of a trend, but you have to make sure you cover your bases.”

As advertising on the Internet gains more attention, campaigns can’t forget the fundamentals of buying television ads during the news and morning shows. The first wave of pre-roll ads online is likely to mirror that strategy. Depending on their level of sophistication, local news Web sites could be one of the first hot spots for online advertising.

“No one is sure if it will work,” said one Democratic media consultant, whose firm considered a Hulu buy for a local race but decided to increase its cable TV buy instead.

Overall, party strategists on both sides of the aisle agree that we’re still in the infancy of voter contact on the Web. And future online political advertising could be dictated by broader trends as companies test business models on the Internet.

“Ad-supported only is going to be a tough place in a fractured world. ... You want a mix of pay and free,” News Corp. Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey warned earlier this year. If Hulu starts charging viewers for access in 2010, its audience would likely decline and even once-intrigued political campaigns may lose interest.

Whatever form online video advertising may take, Todd believes Republicans should be on the front line. “We didn’t just make some policy mistakes, we lost some elections because our campaigns were getting stale,” he said.

This story first appeared in Roll Call andd CQPolitics.com on December 1, 2009. 2009 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved.

It’s Time to Change The Tone of Our ‘Politics’ Coverage

By Stuart Rothenberg

In May, I made an appearance on “Hardball with Chris Matthews,” one of MSNBC’s political shows. The segment’s main focus was the current state of the Republican Party.

When the segment ended and I walked off the set, I knew that that would likely be my last appearance on “Hardball.” I had decided that I would not accept another invitation to appear on the program, should one come.

For those of us who enjoy following politics and are interested in the news, there are fewer and fewer options on television. The Sunday shows and PBS programming — “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,” for example — remain, and there are a handful of others worth watching elsewhere (e.g., “Morning Joe” on MSNBC is fun, informative and thoughtful, and CNN and C-SPAN have their moments). But too often, caricature and vitriol have replaced reporting and analysis.

The networks continue to present national news programs each night, but politics can’t compete with “American Idol” or “CSI,” so cable stations have filled the vacuum with endless hours of what cable executives seem to think constitutes “news” and “politics.”

America’s cable “news” networks have concluded — on the basis of considerable research and evidence, I’m sure — that most viewers don’t want straight news and analysis as much as they want to hear what they already think or to watch predictable partisan attacks.

The three big cable “news” networks don’t exist to provide a public service, after all. They have corporate officers and stockholders to answer to, which means they need more and more eyeballs to generate more advertising dollars.

Their answer: talk radio on TV. Forget about the serious implications and political fallout that follow an event or policy, and instead attack your opponents repeatedly using half-truths, glittering generalities and inapplicable analogies. Given the high ratings of Fox News Channel and MSNBC, the cable gurus probably are right. Advocacy has won out over neutrality.

Chris Matthews is a smart, politically astute observer of politics, but my last appearance convinced me that “Hardball” has evolved from a straight political news program with quality guests to one that has more in common with its network’s prime-time slant. Like most of the evening programming on MSNBC and the Fox News Channel, “Hardball” has become a partisan, heavily ideological sledgehammer clearly intended to beat up one party and one point of view.

During the show on which I appeared, Matthews referred more than once to Republicans as “Luddites” and took every opportunity imaginable to portray them as crackpots. The show’s topics inevitably pander to the most liberal Democratic viewers and present Republicans and conservatives in the least flattering of terms.

I don’t mean to single out Matthews for criticism because he actually understands politics and I believe that he would prefer to do a serious political show. Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and the newest addition to MSNBC’s unfortunate lineup, Ed Schultz, are far worse than “Hardball.”

Depending on your politics, Fox’s one-two prime-time punch of Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity is either just as bad as the MSNBC crowd or much worse. They can’t talk about Democrats without labeling them as socialists or unpatriotic. O’Reilly’s obsession with General Electric and that company’s CEO is bizarre, though any program that treats Dick Morris seriously as an independent analyst obviously has major problems.

When I surf the channels and pause for a moment on O’Reilly or Hannity, I rarely see guests who aren’t openly partisan. But MSNBC’s left-leaning shows do use political reporters and columnists who would bridle at the notion that they are ideologues or favor one party over the other. This is particularly true of “Hardball,” which at one time seemed to want to fill the void left by the cancellation of CNN’s terrific daily political program “Inside Politics.”

For all of the talk about blogging and Tweeting, television is still where it’s at. TV is still what gets reporters and analysts noticed, making them mini-celebrities. It’s hard to turn down any invitation, I guess, and those with network contracts unfortunately don’t have the luxury of being able to say no.

Trying to be an unbiased reporter or neutral analyst on a heavily biased television program is incredibly awkward and uncomfortable. Either you end up fighting the host’s premises and rephrasing loaded questions, or you are tacitly accepting the way the host defines a situation, making yourself an accomplice to a political mugging.

Obviously, it isn’t up to me to dictate to others who fashion themselves as neutral whether they should appear on these kinds of programs. They wouldn’t listen to me anyway, and for some, financial issues or public relations may be overriding considerations.

But I know that I don’t want to appear on shows that push a partisan or ideological agenda and that care more about demonizing one point of view than having a real discussion. At the very least, I hope others will take a few moments to consider whether they, too, should appear on these kinds of programs.

This column first appeared in Roll Call on June 8, 2009. 2009 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Media Cover Obama Like He’s Ultimate A-List Celebrity

By Stuart Rothenberg

For the national media, Barack Obama isn’t merely the president of the United States. He’s so much more than that.

Obama is a celebrity, and he and his family are covered that way. That means there is a heavy focus on the personal, making Obama the first “Entertainment Tonight president.”

First, it was Michelle’s wardrobe. Then, it was the kids’ school. Then it was Michelle’s White House vegetable garden. And most recently, it is the new dog, Bo.

As befitting the pet of an international celebrity, Bo-mania is an international phenomenon. AFP, the French news agency, reported Tuesday a “surge of interest in the pedigree in Britain,” after the announcement about the Obamas’ new Portuguese water dog.

“We frequently see the popularity of certain breeds soar once people have seen them being bought by their favorite celebrities,” said a spokeswoman for Britain’s Kennel Club.

Note that the Kennel Club spokeswoman said “celebrities.” First the Beckhams, then the Osbournes and now the Obamas. But you would have to be more than a little naive to believe that the White House isn’t helping feed the media beast. Washington Post staff writer Manuel Roig-Franzia’s April 12 piece showed that the White House had orchestrated a series of “exclusives,” giving the garden story to the New York Times and the dog story to the Post.

It’s hard to know what hard news story the public relations folks inside the administration will think of next. Maybe re-paint the kids’ rooms? How about new bikes for the whole family? That’s sure to be a big story. There are a lot of bike riders around the country, and bicycling involves physical fitness and the environment at the same time.

I know there isn’t much happening in the world these days — other than the North Koreans exporting their nuclear technology to the Middle East, growing authoritarianism in South America and the budget deficit — so it’s understandable that the media are so locked in on the Obamas.

Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot. The media are paying plenty of attention to those pirates off the coast of Somalia. You know, those swashbuckling romantic heroes who evoke memories of great pirates of the past, including Tyrone Power (“The Black Swan,” 1942, with Maureen O’Hara), Johnny Depp (“Pirates of the Caribbean,” 2003, with Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly) and Roberto Clemente (Pittsburgh Pirates, 1955-1972, .317 lifetime batting average).

But back to something really important, such as Portuguese water dogs.

If you run through the recent Obama topics (e.g., the garden, the dog), you would have to say the Obama family’s life resembles a couple of episodes from “The Dick Van Dyke Show” of the 1960s. (In fact, episodes 7 and 130 of that series dealt with dogs in the Petrie household.)

Actually, some inside-the-Beltway friends of mine have been comparing Obama to Vincent Chase, the lead character in the popular (and extremely hip) HBO series “Entourage,” which tells the story of a young actor (not yet president) who becomes something of a celebrity and his hangers-on.

His entourage includes his often-over-the-top brother, Johnny “Drama” Chase (played, some think, in the case of Obama, by Vice President Joseph Biden); Turtle, his chunky gofer-buddy from childhood who’ll do whatever Vince needs done (played by Communications Director Robert Gibbs); his reasonably sane friend and manager, Eric (played by strategist David Axelrod); and his hyperaggressive, hyperkinetic agent, Ari Gold (played by Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel).

The Ari Gold character, of course, is patterned after super-agent Ari Emanuel, Rahm’s real-life brother. Ari Emanuel reps Mark Wahlberg, an actor and ex-rapper who is the executive producer of “Entourage.”

Fans of “Entourage” even note that a dog played a role in the series pilot. (One scary thought: Johnny Drama bought a horse in one episode, an obvious possible storyline for the Obamas because all young girls seem to go through a pony stage.)

The line between fiction and reality is going to fade even more, according to the Hollywood Reporter, when Michelle Obama’s hairstylist, Johnny Wright, gets his own television “reality” show. (Will Michelle make an appearance?)

Is there a serious political angle to all of this Obama celebrity talk? There is.

In encouraging all of the celebrity coverage (journalists don’t need much encouragement given the public’s apparent unquenchable need for gossip), the White House surely is trying to keep Obama’s appeal high among those Americans who really don’t care a great deal about politics.

Being celebrities gives the Obamas a bigger audience, and probably deeper emotional commitments, than many politicians receive. Even if the economy doesn’t recover completely and Obama’s policy proposals stir up opposition, he could retain his popularity — and, with it, political clout on Capitol Hill — because of his (and his family’s) celebrity coverage and appeal.

That’s not a bad thing for a president proposing one of the most ambitious agendas ever, or for journalists looking for a way to get a byline.


This column first appeared in Roll Call on April 20, 2009. 2009 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Can Anyone Bring America Together in an Era of Division?

By Stuart Rothenberg

President-elect Barack Obama says he wants to bring America together. While that rallying cry sounds good to many people, it would require a Herculean task that may well be impossible.

We are currently in a media environment dominated by loud, often-nasty ideologues who care more about belittling and demonizing the opposition than promoting ideas and civility.

While some of our politicians and political leaders certainly deserve blame for contributing to the animosity, the problem goes beyond them and to the larger culture.

Just go to the Web or turn on a cable TV news network, and you’ll see and hear the kind of coarse, downright mean characterizations of politicians that have made civility and rationality all but impossible when discussing politics or political issues.

On MSNBC, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow have chosen to be every bit as unfair and misleading as Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly at Fox. MSNBC brings on writers from the very-left-of-center Nation magazine, much as Fox brings on the agenda- driven Dick Morris — offering partisan, ideological drivel that masquerades as serious political analysis.

Many of these talk-show hosts have no interest in being even-handed, preferring instead to play to the partisan preferences of their viewers. So they mischaracterize their opponents; ask loaded, self-serving questions intended to damage the opposition; and pass falsehoods and half-truths off as accurate characterizations of their adversaries.

What’s lacking, of course, is any sense of humility. The Olbermanns and O’Reillys of the world hardly ever express any doubts about their own views or display a sense of modesty. They are right and their opponents are wrong. Always.

Unfortunately, these efforts at pandering to true believers have borne fruit. Conservatives now watch Fox, while liberals tune into MSNBC. The public deserves some of the blame, of course, because these networks are only giving people what they want.

CNN, the alternative on the cable side, hasn’t sunk to the depths of the other two cable news networks, but it too has chosen to elevate personality over the news. Indeed, the celebrity aspect of alleged news coverage continues to grow, often adding to political polarization. The media’s post- election obsession with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) is a good example.

Beyond the media’s contribution to divisiveness is the reality that November’s exit poll continues to show deep divisions in the country — divisions that will not be healed easily, no matter the president-elect’s intentions.

The country’s deepest and most-explosive division revolves around culture.

Four in 10 voters attend religious services at least weekly, and they went for John McCain, 55 percent to 43 percent. Almost an equal number of voters, 42 percent, said they attend religious services only occasionally, and they went for Obama, 57 percent to 42 percent. And among those voters who never attend religious services, Obama won by 37 points, 67 percent to 30 percent.

On guns, another longtime indicator of cultural values, divisions remain deep. A substantial 42 percent of Americans own guns, and they voted for McCain, 62 percent to 37 percent. Those voters who don’t own a gun, 58 percent of all respondents in the exit poll, went for Obama by 32 points, 65 percent to 33 percent.

It’s true, of course, that if Americans no longer care about cultural issues, as some suggest, these differences are unimportant. But with gay marriage clearly remaining a major issue on the national radar and with Supreme Court vacancies and appointments nearly certain in the next few years, it’s unlikely that cultural issues will evaporate.

Further, the size of Obama’s victory and the nature of the problems that he will confront don’t suggest the end of division.

Obama’s 53 percent victory was a solid win, far more decisive than the last two presidential elections. But it was hardly a blowout.

His apparent margin of 6.8 points (based on near-final numbers from CNN) was well below the true landslide margins in Richard Nixon’s and Ronald Reagan’s re-elections (23.2 points and 18.2 points, respectively), but it also was below Bill Clinton’s re-election (8.5 points). Maybe more importantly, it was significantly below Reagan’s margin over Jimmy Carter (9.6 points) and slightly below George H.W. Bush’s 7.8-point margin in the 1988 open-seat race.

In other words, America did not “come together” to elect Obama. The country was divided, and while most Americans now hope that he can solve the nation’s problems, the new president’s choices will invariably require him to make trade-offs — trade-offs that are likely to anger some, maybe many, Americans.

While many Americans say they would like the country to come together, what they often really mean is that they would like others to change their views.

Obama has the oratorical skills to capture the public’s attention, and the nation’s pessimism about the future actually gives the president-elect a unique opportunity to rally support.

But unless our new president is smart enough and lucky enough to preside over the transformation of the American economy, and unless he places a higher priority on uniting the country, rather than pursing an ideological agenda, we are likely headed for more nastiness and division sooner or later.

This column first appeared in Roll Call on December 1, 2008. 2008 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Handicapping Versus Reporting, Analyzing the Presidential Race

By Stuart Rothenberg

As I’ve watched the first few months of the 2008 presidential race, I’ve been struck by how differently the race can be watched and evaluated.

Most print and television political reporters, along with their editors, are approaching the contests for the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations as if they are color commentators of a baseball game. They evaluate every pitch, comment on every swing and discuss every possible thought that the batter, pitcher and manager may be having.

But if you are more concerned with who wins, or who will make the first cut, it’s far better to regard the two races as akin to an entire baseball season, starting with spring training and ending with a stretch run that really matters.

It’s not that the early games don’t count as much as the later ones, or that something significant can’t happen early on. A freak injury in spring training can have a huge impact on an entire season. But most spring training games don’t matter very much, which is why most baseball fans don’t follow them with any great urgency.

In point of fact, while every pitch is equally important in the sense that a pitch could result in a dramatic development — a home run that could win a game in May during a season ultimately decided by one victory — in reality, all pitches and all games are not of equal importance.

Of course, we can’t be sure which pitch or game mattered until we look back at the end of the season, but an at-bat in April simply doesn’t have the importance of one during a pennant race in the final weeks in September.

For political journalists, there are plenty of reasons to adopt the baseball game approach, which is why most have done so.

One of the jobs of reporters is to document the day’s news, and each and every day something happens during a campaign, even if one of those things is that nothing happens. Creating a record of the day goes to the core of the journalist’s role, so it isn’t surprising that reporters report on every utterance of a candidate on the campaign trail and comment during every debate.

The baseball game approach helps to boost readership and ratings. If everything matters, then readers and viewers need to stay on top of daily developments. Hype the story and, hopefully, you hype the attention that the public gives to the next news piece or article. This is one of the reasons why reporters look to create controversies or magnify disagreements. The baseball game approach makes each pitch (each day) a potential media bonanza.

The baseball game approach also keeps those of us in the reporting and analysis business in business. After all, if each pitch is important, it deserves to be reported, analyzed and argued about. That means reporters have to monitor and write about each pitch, and talking heads have to put each pitch in context and assess the impact of each pitch.

The handicapping approach adopts a longer-term perspective that places less emphasis on daily ups and downs. It places more emphasis on the voters and less on the actions of the candidates. It doesn’t ignore news, but it helps avoiding overreaction and hype.

The biggest news so far of this election year, apart from decisions by politicians such as Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner (D) and former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) about whether to run, has been the evolving primary schedule and the decision by a couple of Republican frontrunners not to participate in an Iowa GOP fundraising scheme called the Iowa straw poll.

Candidates have made news, some of which they would have rather not made. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) had an embarrassing encounter with questions about his hunting experience, while former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) had to deal with news and jokes about the cost of his haircuts. But while these kinds of news stories certainly help paint pictures of the candidates and ultimately can go a long way in creating the candidates’ public images, most of them have no lasting impact.

We have had a handful of debates already, and they really haven’t changed the political landscape. Yes, Edwards was aggressive in trying to portray Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) as late to the anti-war position, and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Romney had a dust-up in an early encounter. But few minds were changed by the debates, and more people learned about the debates by reading or listening to post-debate reporting and analysis than by watching the televised events.

Part of the problem, on the Democratic side, is that the top-tier and second-tier candidates all seem to hold the same positions. That means they end up arguing about who opposed the war first or who feels most passionately about it, not about substantive differences. Differences are primarily about style, not substance.

As I’ve noted before, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) looked dead in the water during the summer and fall of 2003, only to resuscitate his campaign in early January in Iowa, when Iowa caucus attendees started to evaluate the candidates with a different eye — an eye toward picking their nominee and the next president of the United States.

To the color commentator, Kerry was a non-factor in the fall of 2003 and had peaked six or eight months earlier. The story was about former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (D). But to the handicapper, the race hadn’t really begun because Iowa voters hadn’t taken their most important look at the choices in front of them.

So if you are watching the 2008 race as a handicapper, you have a fundamentally different attitude than does the color commentator. Handicapping is less fun because it pays less attention to the daily goings-on, but it helps avoid being carried away by boomlets and guards against overinterpreting daily developments, many of which are entertaining but ultimately unimportant.

This column first appeared in Roll Call on June 18, 2007. Copyright 2007 © Roll Call Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.