I live inside the beltway in Cheverly, Maryland. So here I am, watching the Nationals on MASN, a strange network whose sole purpose is showing Orioles and Nationals games. It's owned by the Orioles owner as part of a back-room deal because Washington is so close to the Baltimore market. I have to pay $6 extra on Dish Network to get this network. Anyway, between the innings, the commercials are usually pretty lame. W.B. Mason is a big sponsor. Apparently it's an office supply firm. I've only ever heard of during Nats commercials. There are your typical ads during sports programming, but also "STG" which is some consulting company, GEICO, Miller Lite, Applebee's/Applebee/TGI-Whatever, and lots of Nats ads that act as filler. Anyway, in between these ads I've seen dozens of times I hear the following...
"I'm Barack Obama, and I approve this message."
Hello! What's this? It's at the beginning of the ad, so it's going to be a negative ad. As it turned out, it was the ad criticizing Romney's performance in Massachusettes. It's a pretty good ad - I'd heard about it but I never bothered to click through to see it.
I think this is the first campaign ad I've seen all year. There might have been ads during the VA primary, but I don't remember them. I don't know how ad buys work, but I've heard that it's typical to buy a package that appears on a combination of channels for a fixed period of time. Perhaps MASN is part of a regular rotation for ads, but I doubt it. I'm guessing that the Obama campaign bought a deluxe package.
The Nationals have fans in Maryland, DC, and Virginia. Gee, I wonder which voters Obama is targeting?
Obama's all-in in Virginia. The Romney camp can talk all they want about Wisconsin, but the exit polls show that the badger state is a pipe dream. Romeny is going to have to spend money in the expensive DC market now or his electoral map is going to become next to impossible.
