Radio Obama fever hits Indian politicians

Recently I wrote about Indian politicians using the power of the internet in India. The Obama campaign fever surely has been a huge success even amongst the Indian politicians. Obama campaigned impressively on every medium available.

I recommend you read this blog post which talks about how Obama used the net to plan his presidency and how Republicans are countering the unstoppable online-Obama. Few interesting points about Radio Obama,

• President-elect Barack Obama spent $250 million on advertising versus the $210 million spent by Sen John McCain and the Republican National Committee. Radio business as a whole got about 10% of total broadcast budgets for political advertising, according to TNS — which should be approximately $200 million.
• In day-to-day radio ad spending by both candidates, per Clear Channel’s analysis, Obama outspent McCain by a remarkable factor of 5-to-1 in radio advertising.
• Obama also made radio the centrepiece of his final media push in states like Pennsylvania, at least in terms of the total number of ad messages broadcast. McCurdy said Obama ran about 650 radio spots in the Philadelphia market in the week of Oct. 27 versus about 540 local TV spots and 120 cable TV spots.
• Obama spent about 70% of his ad dollars in states that voted for George Bush in the 2004 election (excellent strategy)

According to an article in Mint today few political parties have already started advertising on radio. Some highlights,

• Last year, the radio industry earned about Rs 600 crore in advertising
• This year (2008), the stations will get Rs 125-150 crore just from political campaigns
• Radio stations are charging between Rs 250 and Rs1,200 for a 10-50 second spot.

It is good to see radio stations making this kind of monies, hopefully, these politicians don’t have a business plan for getting the money back from these radio stations once voted to power! Our politicians can always introduce some painful laws and get paid for not implementing those laws!

It would be good to see if callers can call in our patriotic politicians on radio shows and ‘confront’ them with some real questions which effect our daily lives. It may not happen this time but someday it will. We have some ancient laws, radio cannot broadcast “News”, are they trying to protect All India Radio?

Politicians have been spending on Print ads and lately on Mobile marketing. Now they will be on the air, need to see what kind of ‘waves’ they will create. I am waiting for them to get serious about online advertising..will keep waiting…