See that nice house? It’s located in Alexandria, Virginia. It’s the “principal office” of Old Towne Media. Old Towne Media is Bernie Sanders’ TV ad buyer, and has been the recipient of at least $64,000,000 and change to buy ads.
www.opensecrets.org/...
Old Towne Media (it apparently has two entities, an LLC and an Inc., at the same address) has no website. It/they apparently have 4 employees, and according to this piece, was founded by former co-workers of Tad Devine. Almost nothing else is known about Old Towne Media.
Also according to the Medium story, Old Towne Media takes a 15% commission on the ads it buys, or $9.6 million of the figure above, which is apparently two-to-three times what most ad buyers are paid.
According to the Washington Post, Old Towne Media splits their commissions with- Tad Devine, which would be $4.8 million, so far. (Note that Devine phrases it as “splitting a single-digit percentage”, which would be somewhat truthy, since his end is 7.5%)
In an interview, Devine acknowledged that he has made more money than expected from the campaign, but he noted that he is working for a much lower rate than usual. While he usually gets a double-digit percentage of a campaign’s ad spending, the veteran admaker is instead splitting a single-digit-percentage commission with the media buyers at Old Towne Media.
www.washingtonpost.com/…
Who else gets a piece of the other $4.6 million Devine isn’t getting? There may be a hint here:
Media buyers typically earn a commission of about 15 percent of the cost of placing an ad. In 2004, Jane Sanders earned about $11,000 for about $70,000 in media buys, Weaver said. In 2002, Sanders took commissions of about $14,500 for media buys of about $98,000, Weaver said. She earned an additional $4,800 for other consulting to the campaign.
www.timesargus.com/…
I have found no direct evidence that Jane Sanders is drawing part of the commission on campaign ad buys, but it does occur to me that it might explain the reluctance to release the tax returns.
But the larger question, to me, is why all the secrecy, Bernie?