There's Big Money in Politics

(H/T to me: crossposted from box office weekly)

The Hollywood Reporter scooped me this morning. I was thinking of writing a commentary about the surprising amount of interest in the presidential election, and here comes James Hibbard in his LIVE FEED blog. He opens:

Have Nielsen ratings ever been so politicized?

-- Barack Obama received record-breaking viewers for his Democratic National Convention speech.

-- John McCain's convention speech shocked pundits by matching Obama.

-- The first Obama-McCain debate received a surprisingly non-historic viewership.

-- Yet the debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden drew a blowout audience, the most watched vp debate ever.

Even I watched the VP debate, and I also watched the SNL satire of the event a few nights later. And indeed, SNL is garnering their best ratings in years, having hitched their wagon to the blazing satire-friendly star of Sarah Palin. I gotta also say, they did a wicked Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi. SNL seems to be taking the honorable path for satirists and lobbing volleys in all directions. Welcome back Lorne. All is forgiven.

There's no need to take sides in analyzing this trend. People just seem to really want to watch stuff about politics. They want to watch the debates and they want to see what the pundits think afterwards. They'd rather watch politics than hour-long dramatics, or even more conventional reality shows. It's like America's Top Model, only when the season finale happens your life will actually be affected by which model wins. Hopefully.

So great, TV has found something else to put commercials around. Unfortunately, the Presidential election has a definite cutoff date. There's money to be made out of this thing until early November, then like the Olympics, the cash cow disappears and you're left with a bunch of pundits who have to go back to making issues out of nothing.

Forgive me for putting this idea out there, but someone is going to and it might as well be yours truly. Elections are good for ratings, most local governments are going to be strapped for cash in the next few years... would it kill us to have a sponsored Mayoral campaign somewhere? That is, would it kill democracy? Yeah, probably. But like I say, it's inevitable. Ideally, Endemol or some other reality show outfit would swoop in early on, drop equal seed money on two candidates somewhere in exchange for total access to the campaigns. Then they could cut the footage together into an hour a week of Survivor-like goodness.

It sounds a little distasteful, but it's not outside the envelope of reality shows OR politics; the only new element is the combination. Look at it this way - it's just like a documentary but with frequent commercial breaks and cheesier music. Sadly, there are only so many of these shows you can have on the air at one time and there are lots of mayoral races.

And for the CW (let's assume it will be them first) it means an hour of TV that costs a LOT less than an episode of SMALLVILLE. As far as casting goes, they'd probably pick a race where the candidates are younger and more telegenic than usual, but you don't need a reality show to force THAT issue. Again, it's inevitable. Why not make a little cash off it?

Once this goes on the air, I won't watch it. I'm already getting my political entertainment off the blogs. But you might. And when you do, someone is waiting in the wings to sell you soap, cars and pharmacology. And remember, whatever they spend on advertising is a dollar less they're giving to lobbyists.