As we prepare to ring in the New Year, “visions of sugar plums” are still dancing in many heads. Ah, yes. Welcome to 2008, a presidential election year!
For equipment manufacturers, each presidential election year represents a cornucopia of business opportunity — a marketer's dream and a salesman's delight. The equipment sales bonanza that occurs in the broadcast industry every four years is the virtual equivalent to Black Friday for retailers. I am sure many broadcast equipment manufacturers are thinking, “Wouldn't it be great if this too were an annual event rather than a quadrennial occurrence?” The four-year spike in sales revenue for manufacturers is as predictable as the sunrise.
This is the time when chief engineers sprinkle wish list dust on their long list of equipment needs. Maintenance and expense item budgets bulge and capital equipment budgets fatten as approval committees are not quite so tough with their wring-out procedures for evaluation of capital equipment purchase justifications.
The timing for this particular presidential election is really opportune. With the DTV changeover date coming early in 2009, next year will be a good time for broadcasters to make those DTV equipment purchases that were overlooked or that they couldn't afford in prior year budgets.
Test and measurement equipment needs, for example, are a huge area that many stations may have shortchanged or missed altogether. Waveform analyzers and vectorscopes are still the staple at many stations, but they won't cut it in the DTV era. And if you are the one still responsible for them being the staple, you better be careful or you might not be able to hack it in the DTV era!
Then consider HD news. With many stations wanting to or planning to transition local news to HD, 2008 might be the year to do just that both from a competitive and an affordability perspective.
The basis for all this spending largesse is the huge revenue spike that broadcasters will realize as those swelling political campaign coffers begin to pour into TV advertising. With wide open races in 2008, there will be a record number of candidates from both the Democrat and Republican parties seeking victory in the primaries and then the presidential election. Add to that 11 gubernatorial races, one-third of the Senate engaged in an election contest and all 435 House seats in play. Also, don't forget the messages that a host of issues and special interest groups will want to communicate. Plus there are a myriad of local races.
In all, analysts are projecting politically related media spending to be $3 billion during the 2008 election year, with the vast majority of the media buying going to television. That's a figure, by the way, that represents a 77-percent increase over what was spent four years ago and a whopping 13X the $227 million that was spent 20 years ago.
And, it's not only an airtime opportunity. Don't forget, all those spots will have to be captured, edited and postproduced.
If your station has a production arm, light a fire under the sales staff. Need some new production equipment? What better justification is there than an election year? In the noise of all those airing commercials, production value can be sold as a real differentiator.
Remember, by the time the harvest moon shines next year, that political advocacy golden carriage filled with media dollars will have just about turned into a pumpkin. Whether you're on the equipment supply side or the equipment acquisition side, you should already have a plan that ensures you don't wind up with just the seeds.
Anthony R. Gargano is a consultant and former industry executive.
Send questions and comments to:anthony.gargano@penton.com
