Just as planned! Huzzah!
Sinclair Posts 16% Revenue Gain
Political higher than expected, national ad revenue up 30%
Sinclair Broadcast Group reported net broadcast revenues in the third quarter of $158.8 million, a 16.4% increase over the same quarter a year ago. Political revenue was nearly $10 million. Local broadcast revenues were up almost 12%, and national ad revenues up 30%.
"Political advertising came in higher than expected and that trend has continued in the fourth quarter where we expect $26.8 million in political revenues," commented Sinclair President/CEO David Smith. "For the year, political revenues are expected to be approximately $41.9 million, a record amount for us. This would represent a 34.7% increase over 2006's $31.1 million in political revenues and a 1.9% increase over the 2008 presidential year's $41.1 million."
This is where your campaign donations go, peeps.
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[UPDATE]:
"Blue Dog Coalition Crushed”:
According to an analysis by The Huffington Post, 22 of the 46 Blue Dogs up for re-election went down on Tuesday. Notable losses included Rep. Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin (D-S.D.), the coalition's co-chair for administration, and Rep. Baron Hill (D-Ind.), the co-chair for policy. Two members were running for higher office (both lost), four were retiring and three races were still too close to call.
And:
Loudly breaking with Obama on health care was not a winner, either. "Of the 34 Democrats who voted against the health care bill in March - 24 of them were Blue Dogs - only 12 won reelection," notes reporter Jon Ward.
Yes clearly Democrats were too liberal. Not.
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.... and yes, I do mean that in the “sitting with a gun in our mouths crying like babies” sense.
Before crawling back into my NaNoWriMo hole I did want to reflect on the midterms. Republicans swept into the House of Representatives with some historic wins. Yes, the “tsunami” predictions were correct.
Here in Tennessee I was frankly surprised that Lincoln Davis got spanked so badly -- DesJarlais won handily, with 57% of the vote. I have to think the DCCC’s stupid decision to go negative bringing up DesJarlais’ domestic violence allegations hurt. Don’t you folks know yet that Republicans are rubber, Democrats are glue? For crying out loud, they re-elected David Fucking Vitter. If a Democrat got nabbed in a similar prostitution sting, their career would be over. For Republicans, it’s re-election all the way, bay-beee.
Then again, Digby makes a good point on the “conventional wisdom” surrounding Alan Grayson’s loss, which can easily be applied to Tennessee’s races:
Regarding Grayson,well we have a little controlled experiment. His neighboring first term Democratic congresswoman Suzanne Kosmas, in a very similar district, took the opposite approach to Grayson. She ran as hard to the right as she could get away with, never had a controversial thought much less uttered one, was rewarded with big money and support from the DCCC --- and she lost too. This race was bigger than both of them. Florida is turning hard right.
Lincoln Davis certainly was no progressive -- his chief of staff once famously said he “wasn’t sure” if President Obama has terrorist connections. This election was too big for Tennessee’s Blue Dogs, too.
Digby goes on:
As far as the notorious Aqua Buddha goes, Conway was strong armed by the DSCC into running that ad because --- as usual --- they believed that all politicians have to run to the right no matter what the circumstances and they thought Paul was soft with social conservatives. If the ad backfired, you can thank the "professional" hacks not the dirty hippies, for insisting that it was a good idea for Conway to pretend to be something that he isn't. It never works.
Yup. And that holds true in the Lincoln Davis race, too.
In the Tennessee state races, I’m thrilled to see “Democrat” Doug Jackson sent his walking papers. This DINO was the legislator behind Tennessee’s guns in bars bill and a big supporter of SJR 127, our statewide anti-abortion measure that will now surely appear on the 2012 ballot. I’m sure Jackson lost because he wasn’t conservative enough. /snark.
On the Senate side, Tea Party candidates were a big fail. Rand Paul was the lone exception; Sharron Angle lost. Christine O’Donnell was a spectacular flameout. Alaska’s Joe Miller was a fail. Seems to me if it weren’t for the Tea Party, the Republicans would have taken back the Senate, too. (I was actually hoping Harry Reid would lose, because he is a terrible Senate majority leader. But, alas, it was not to be.)
I’m sure the take-away will be Democrats “over-reached,” moved “too far to the left,” and all sorts of other nonsense [That didn’t take long. Hey Evan Bayh: shut the fuck up]. When in fact the take-away should be, “the economy still sucks,” and “the same people who never vote in midterm elections didn’t vote this year either.”
Simply put, the Republican base was motivated. The Democratic base was not. That’s really all you need to know. Whenever Democrats run to the right they lose. When given a choice between a real Republican and a fake one, voters will pick the real one. Democrats need to show they are the alternative, not a paler version of what the other guys are offering. That should be the lesson here, but it won't be.
The bright spot is California, which is returning to sanity. While pot legalization failed, the lesser-known Proposition 25 passed, which to me is a much bigger deal. In essence, California voted against gridlock. Similarly, the spectacular failures of Proposition 23, Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman is a staunch rebuke to CEO politics.
So it’s back to business as usual, near as I can tell. We’re hearing all the usual BS from Republicans, about how the American people are “worried about spending,” when during the Bush years they spent like drunken sailors and no one gave a crap. It’s IOKIYAR all over again. Let’s prepare ourselves for the usual Republican rent-boy scandals and bogus investigations into ACORN, the New Black Panthers, birth certificates, George Soros and anything else they can dream up. We’ll have epic gridlock because the Republicans have no interest in governing, just in obtaining power. We'll probably have more war with Iran talk -- David Broder's trial balloon to that effect should have sobered up our media; instead they ignored it. Only a few dirty bloggers bothered to notice.
But it's just two years. In 2012 the same people who showed up to vote for Obama in 2008 will show up to vote for him again. The Democrats have two years to get their shit together. Can they do it? I'm not so sure. I stand by my list of objections to the rigged game which prioritizes corporate greed over the popular voice. I plan to send this list in response to every DSCC and DCCC fundraising request I get. American plutocracy continues; big business was the big winner last night. Our system is still broken, and will remain so, because the Democrats squandered their chance to fix it.
But we've been through this before. We'll get through it again.
