The bigger question is whether we’ll see any pivot in Trump’s ad-spending strategy from the primary to the general election. He has spent a fraction of the amount laid out by either of his Democratic opponents and several of his erstwhile competitors for the Republican nomination. The conventional wisdom suggests that the free airtime he attracts as a result of his controversial remarks is bad news for ad spend.
There has been a lot written about the media’s complicity in fueling Trump’s rise to the top of the dung heap formerly known as the Republican Party. In reality television-obsessed America, Trump’s shtick plays for ratings, especially on cable news. Heck, he has almost single-handedly resurrected CNN, which not to long ago was looking up at the Hallmark Channel.
It’s rather humorous to see the networks just beginning to realize that all of the free publicity they are giving Trump is, you know, free. Fox News is practically a Trump infomercial whenever Greg Gutfeld or Megyn Kelly aren’t on camera. The other networks, both over-the-air and cable, obsess over him like scorned teenage crushes. It matters not if it’s something they intend to be negative, he and his followers embrace it all.
So why should he drop millions on advertising when all of television news is Trump TV?
That’s something they perhaps should have considered last August.
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