We’re just over three weeks away from Election Day for the 2026 midterms. You don’t need to be told that if you’ve been in front of a television screen in the past few weeks. Actually, if you have been in front of almost ANY screen, you know the calendar. Why? Because the airwaves and any other means of distributing video have been nearly overrun by the incessant stream of paid political messages of all stripes.
And it will probably get worse before it gets better.
We say this coming to you from a relatively “blue” state, and even here it is just insane. We can’t even imagine what our readers in Texas, Ohio, Georgia, and North Carolina are being bombarded with.
If aliens were watching from somewhere in space, they would likely think the current President is on the ballot, even though his name will not appear in any of the fifty states. They would also have to believe socialists are on the ballot in every state, which, of course, they are not.
And they would have to wonder, as we do, just who makes up the political action committees with the titles of “(state residents) For Sanity”? Because little qualifies as sane about the messages the PACs are paying to run in nearly every campaign for any statewide office.
But believe it or not, we here at “The Topline” aren’t in the political predictions business, so this column isn’t really about the political landscape in 2026 or how it might change after Tuesday, November 3rd.
Instead, we’re here to share an observation that has struck us a few times while watching the countless political spots playing on our television set, and likely yours as well.
And that observation is that political messaging is about as crazy as it has ever been. Maybe even more than ever before. Given the state of the nation, the media, and public discourse in general, is anyone really surprised anymore?
We’ll admit we were surprised by one recent ad from Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, the Democratic Senate candidate running against incumbent Republican Jon Husted. We’ll warn you this online version is NSFW, while they used a different, cleaner version on broadcast stations around the state.
And that brings us to our bigger point: Local television broadcasters should take a serious lesson about messaging from this political season—aside from the money they will take from the candidates and PACs buying up every scrap of airtime they can find. (In fact, it is getting so crazy out there that we have seen statewide races buying ads in national college football games, because it is apparently cheaper to go that route than trying to buy time in every local market in a state like Texas.)
We’ve said it here before, and we’ll say it again for the record. The vast majority of on-air marketing for the vast majority of local television stations is just crap—to put it more nicely than that guy in Sherrod Brown’s commercial did. It is tired and formulaic at best, or insulting and boring at worst.
Political ads with the candidate looking straight into the camera and promising to do this or that if they get elected, and anchors looking into the camera and telling viewers they are dedicated and proud to be part of this community and this news team, are equally ineffective. (That’s assuming your station even still has anchors in the first place. Some groups are turning anchors into endangered species.)
Your station should fight for viewers just as hard as candidates are fighting now for votes. The survival of some stations may truly be hanging in the balance.
Even as every station in a battleground state is reaping the windfall of unprecedented spending this election cycle, the real test is just ahead in 2027. It will be an off year for elections, and thus political spending will not be on the budget spreadsheet to keep the bottom line from looking like polling for any candidate endorsing a tax increase. The “feast and famine” cycle of ad dollars next year will lead not only to more budget tightening, but also to a good bit of sphincter tightening.
With viewership declining outside live sporting events, we just wonder when some clever local station leaders will air promotional messages that have more impact than the same tired slogans insurance companies have now adopted. (Progressive has pretty much ruined “Coverage you can count on” for any station now.)
Wouldn’t it be refreshing if a station committed to an actual campaign promise—and then documented how it delivered on that promise? If your station has the stones to still claim it is “Working for You,” then how about proving it? Let’s hear from actual viewers about how you worked for them.
We don’t expect any station to go so far as to call out its competition by name—but wouldn’t it be impactful if it did?
Some twenty years ago, one station in Terre Haute, Indiana (market #159) did just that.
WTWO, the local NBC affiliate in Terre Haute, called out cross-town rival and long-time market leader WTHI—the CBS affiliate there—in what can only be described as a 60-second attack ad posing as a station promo. WTWO’s promo took WTHI’s weather coverage to task, and specifically its weather radar. The WTWO commercial pointed out that because WTHI’s radar was physically located at the station in downtown Terre Haute, it was subject to a “dead zone” (the area directly around and above where the radar beam originates). This “dead zone” purportedly covered much of downtown Terre Haute. By contrast, because WTWO’s radar was located outside the city (near a cornfield), it better covered the area where most folks lived. WTWO even put up a website at dopplerdeadzone.com to explain the claim in detail. (Alas, the website is no longer available.)
Not content with that single attack, the WTWO promo went on to claim its weather team had years more experience than WTHI’s and questioned whether WTHI might have had a power failure during a recent major storm.
You can still watch this bold bit of broadcasting history right here—because everything lives forever on YouTube.
The commercial ended up being featured at the time (and not in a complimentary way) on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” (this was back when Jon was still working four days a week instead of just one). WTWO’s General Manager at the time, Duane Lammers, didn’t take too kindly to “The Daily Show” having fun with the commercial and called out the program, saying they must be “hard up for material” in a local newspaper interview.
Of course, that led to a second night of jokes at both Lammers’ and WTWO’s expense.
In an interesting bit of history, Nexstar owned WTWO at the time, and Lammers was also the company’s COO. A decade later, Nexstar would buy Media General, which then owned WTHI. Nexstar decided to keep WTWO and sell WTHI, even though the latter still had the better ratings.
So the brash commercial—and the subsequent controversy—didn’t suddenly propel WTWO’s ratings past WTHI, but it earned the station attention and, of course, got people talking. Maybe not all in a positive way, but as the old saying goes: “All publicity is good publicity.” (Also said as “There is no such thing as bad publicity.”)
And at the end of the day, that is exactly what a marketing message is supposed to do.
What we can tell you is that there is no shortage of local television stations that need some marketing breakthroughs to “get on the radar” of those still viewing in their respective markets.
Like all the candidates trying to win your vote this coming election day, these stations’ campaigns are running out of time. We hate to say it, but in the uncertain future of the local television business, more stations may not have a race to run in the next two to four years.
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