Monday, September 9, 2019

Special Interests Reach Trump Via FOX Commercials

Farmers seeking government assistance knew where to make their case: on Fox News, in TV ads with tractors and corn stalks designed to snag the attention of President Donald Trump, reports Bloomberg.

U.S. airlines, opposed to subsidies for foreign competitors paid by Qatar, took the same broadcast route to the viewer-in-chief, urging him to oppose “trade cheating.”

While the ads generate a small portion of the network’s income—many are local spots airing only in Washington—the phenomenon points to the unusual symbiosis between a conservative president and conservative opinion programs that boosted his political fortunes. Trump’s penchant for sharing his viewing habits with regular tweets to his millions of followers in turn helps drive viewers to the shows.

Advertisers long have sought to reach influential people, such as legislators and their staff, for instance by running ads on Sunday TV talk shows that are viewed by the political class, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

What’s new is the certainty that a president would be watching a program such as "Fox & Friends," Jamieson said.

“The underlying problem isn’t that these folks have figured out to buy ads targeted to the president,” Jamieson said in an interview. “The problem is that the president gets his information from these shows.”

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