Navigating Election Noise

An election year can bring uncertainty, and that uncertainty might not be good for business or for clarity about your public relations plan. But if you are looking at earning media on broadcast or cable TV, these tips and this information might give you a little bit more comfort and a little bit more certainty. It turns out that in the 2020 election, cable news spent 667% more of its time covering politics than local TV news did.

D S Simon Media did a recent analysis of a heavy news day following one of the early Republican presidential campaign debates in this cycle. We studied the coverage on local TV morning news in Los Angeles, New York, Austin, Milwaukee, and Orlando, giving us geographic coverage all across the country. What we found was local TV news only spent 9% of its show covering political news. Networks, cable news, that’s a different story, but local TV news is an opportunity.

The National Association of Broadcasters has found a 35% to 40% increase during the last ten years in the amount of local TV news. When it comes to Spanish-language newscasts, that number has doubled, and there’s a reason that the local TV stations don’t cover politics as intensively as you might think. One of them is that they know if one of their viewers is a political junkie, they’re going to be watching one of the cable stations that align with their political beliefs.

Additional good news for PR people concerned about the effect of the election is Trump’s large win in Iowa. It’s going to be certain fairly soon that it’s going to be a Trump, Biden matchup. And there will be less news, even for cable and national networks to cover. So, when making your plan for 2024, it’s still possible to get your story on television, especially if you think local news, which in our survey data is far more trusted than any other media outlet.

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