CBS chief Les Moonves famously cheered “Go Donald!” during an investor call in December, and in February said Donald Trump’s campaign “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”
Now he’s found a new way to celebrate the Trump run.
Countering concerns in the media industry that Trump may not spend as much campaign money on TV commercials as a traditional major-party nominee, Moonves is pointing with delight to all the money down-ballot Republicans will spend to distance themselves from their party’s standard-bearer.
“There may be some Republican candidates that — local senators and governors — who are going to have to spend more money, because let’s put it this way, they may not be absolutely in sync with the national ticket,” Moonves said at the Deutsche Bank Media, Internet & Telecom Conference last week. “So there may be more money that way.”
Moonves reaffirmed that the 2016 campaign season is still set to be a “record-breaking” year for political spending on TV.
“I’d be surprised if we don’t see a new high-water mark,” he said. “This is a pretty interesting year. I’m going to be careful what I said because I got in trouble last week for saying something that got misconstrued about Mr. Trump. All I said was he’s very good for ratings, put it that way.”
He explained:
Ratings are way up in the debates and that means extra money and political advertising. If you notice, there’s a whole new batch of advertising being spent right now, the political situation is very strong and I think it will remain so the rest of the year. It obviously helps our local stations a lot. We have a lot of stations in key markets, and so we are looking forward to this year as to be a year that delivers a lot of political advertising.
Listen to Moonves’s comments at the conference below:
Bryan Kraft, an analyst with Deustche Bank, raised the possibility that Trump will buck the tradition of candidates dumping large amounts of campaign money on TV. “There’s some concern out there that if Trump is a Republican nominee, that he’ll spend less on TV, because of his effective utilization of both social media, as well as just the cable news,” said Kraft.
According to data compiled by mediaQuant, a company that tracks media coverage, Trump has benefited from nearly $2 billion worth of media attention, far outpacing coverage of any other candidate in the presidential election.
Perhaps for that reason, Trump has spent far less on campaign ads than other leading candidates. Jeb Bush, who suspended his campaign after a dismal showing, spent $82 million on television advertisements compared to Trump’s $10 million through February.
Media executives have been delighted about the onslaught of political advertisement spending for the 2016 campaign season. There are estimates there will be at least $5 billion in campaign spending this year, with much of that money going to television, radio, and internet advertising. The role of Super PACs in the presidential and key congressional races is seen as a driver for the increased spending.
In a recent column in the Los Angeles Times, Michael Hiltzik called Moonves’s gleeful view of the carnivalesque presidential debate crass and cynical. The television networks have largely ignored the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, and refused to cover major speeches by Hillary Clinton, John Kasich, and others. “The question today is whether the commercial impulses of TV are interfering with the imperatives of democracy,” Hiltzik wrote.
“No TV executive has been heard to argue that the wall-to-wall coverage of Donald Trump has anything to do with the profundity of his policy statements, which barely exist at all,” Hiltzik continued. “It’s all about the possibility that he’ll do something outrageous.”
Related:
Below Lin Ming wrote:
To the degree that this is true, Bernie’s model is Scandinavia, while Trump’s is part Mussolini, part George Wallace.
I’ve started this petition on Change.org requesting the FCC revoke CBS access to the public airwaves. I hope you’ll read and sign it: https://www.change.org/p/federal-communications-commission-petition-fcc-to-revoke-cbs-access-to-public-airwaves.
We haven’t seen shit yet. Wait till someone get’s killed at one of Trump’s rallies. Ratings will go off the scale.
sheeezusHfuckingchrist. This nation is so bloodthirsty now it makes the Nazi’s look like vegetarians.
Who has instigated and provoked violence at Trump rallies?
Who has rushed the stage at Trump rallies?
Who is trying to shut down the free speech rights of Trump?
Trump supporters, with Trump’s approval and encouragement.
Supporting links in The Atlantic article here.
An unarmed man who intended to confront Trump about the raw racism he is unleashing. (This was incredibly stupid and the guy is lucky he wasn’t shot by the Secret Service.)
Only the government can “shut down” a person’s free speech rights, and I am unaware of the government trying to do that, or of anyone calling for it to do so.
First of all. Ask yourself why no one else is having the problems at their rallies that trump is, when most candidates get protestors. Also trump has used straight up fascist back handed threats of violence. Plus the cherry on top, offering to pay people legal fees for beating up protestors.
All the media attention on Donald Trump, no matter what the reason is, all of it has one thing in common, and Donald said it long ago, RATINGS. And since the media makes their income on ratings alone, they cannot dismiss it. If having a war gives them ratings, they will inadvertantly promote the war. If lynchings gave them ratings, they would hope for lynchings. IT’S CALLED CORRUPTION.
No, it’s called Capitalism.
No. It’s called corruption and Propaganda. Oh and by the way unfettered capitalism has been proven to be a failing system. It has to be temperd with some version of demand side economics.
Surely, were Jagger and/or Richards to publicly repudiate and formally prohibit Trump’s serial use of their infamous Bach-meets-the-baby-boomers song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” at all his rallies, the whole Trump campaign would collapse inexorably according to the principle of inertia. Maybe, instead, just to spite Trump, Jagger & Richards would do well to invite Bernie Sanders to make full usage of their song, “Salt of the Earth”. Or, by now, have the two former street fighting men become devout members of the one per cent?
I love Mick. I’m like a 6’3″ 275 lb Jerry Hall (congrats Rupert) but Mick was an upper middle class student at the London School of Economics and hardly a street fighting man. The smart money would be on Iggy Pop.
At least he’s honest.
quote”At least he’s honest.”unquote
So was Hitler.
And he’s not that honest. He likes to make shit up.
This doesn’t seem very plausible. Why should Republican candidates spend a fortune distancing themselves from Trump when Trump is swimming in votes and cannot get rid of them even when he tries?
What I want to know is: what media deals is Trump making with who? Is he giving anyone a bargain price, or an extravagant payment, who then keeps him in the spotlight 24/7?
A few words from “the Smiths” seem boringly appropriate
during this election season.
Fame, fame, fatal fame
It can play hideous tricks on your brain
but still, I’d rather be famous than righteous or Holy
Any day, Any day, Any day
Frankly Mr. Shankly, this position I’ve held
it pays my way
and it corrodes my soul
I didn’t realize that you wrote poetry
I didn’t realize you wrote such bloody awful poetry
Frankly Mr. Shankly since you asked
You are a flatulent pain in the ass
Oh, I do not mean to be so rude
but I must speak frankly, Mr. Shankly,
Oh, give us money.
Another leftist Jewish SC nominee.
Well at least he is jewish. Netanyahu will give Barack a brownie point. Republicans who declare their allegiance to israel should celebrate. The rest of america, who really cares, they just fight the wars and suffer the debts and stand in unemployment lines so what good are they anyway.
CBS may do well during the election campaign, but I believe the 2017 rights to ‘Live from the Oval Office’ and ‘Survivor: Syria’, have already been purchased by Trump TV.
Yes, to many it does seem crass and cynical. In the same way Pfizer is crass and cynical when it sells worthless drugs. If you have a problem with corporations making profits and doing so at the expense of millions of people you should take up your argument with capitalism rather than gossip about the crassness of its functionaries.
I think the problem is not capitalism per se, but rather the growth of monopolies, i.e. corporate conglomerates who operate not on the basis of ‘free-market capitalism’, but rather on the basis of centralized control by a small number of Wall Street banks and funds who form a Soviet-style Central Committee of the United States economy.
Consider this example:
1) A model of capitalism in which hundreds of small businesses (say, family-owned farms) participate in a free but regulated market (say, a farmer’s market with various food safety regulations), who compete with one another on prices and food quality, while paying their employees fairly, rewarding their productivity and their experience (since the best workers are free to work for other farms, if they pay more) – vs,
2) A model of capitalism in which all of those farms are bought up by two or three corporate agribusiness conglomerates, controlled by the same Wall Street banks, who collude together to set prices, who fire all the well-paid workers from the family farms and replace them with underpaid immigrant laborers supplied by shady contractors, and who get their bribed politicians to write laws gutting food safety regulations.
These are both ‘capitalist’ systems, but note the rather large difference between them? Now, consider the same two models in relation to American corporate journalism – which one represents a real threat to democracy?
“I think the problem is not capitalism per se, but rather the growth of monopolies”. INDEED YOU ARE CORRECT.
The significant difference between monopolies and non-monopolies is the effect on the primary issue that lies underneath the support of capitalism and that is OWNERSHIP OF LIFE SUPPORT. By the same token, freedom of speech isn’t really “free of ___” if at the same time you are not having “freedom to listen to ___”.
Monopolism breeds predatorism. The goal of any business is to capture the entire market. But in the beginning, the goal of the business was to serve it’s local public. After time, that business can turn into the cash cow golden calf which attracts those who worship money – corruption. Then, the business mutates and instead for serving the people, feeds on the people. Unless that now-an-economy-of-its-own business is nationalized, it becomes a poison. In order for people to govern themselves on an equal basis, they need to own that basis.
Thank you Lee for validating all the negatives said about the mainstream media (MSM).
So it should NOT come as a surprise that there is more coverage of Donald Drumpf than Bernie Sanders, even though Sanders has a sizable lead in numbers of supporters.
Unfortunately, Drumpf has a sizable lead in MSM supporters.
Bernie has much more in common with Trump than he does with that phony Hillary.
If the nominees are Donald Drumpf and Hillary Clinton, either way it’s a contest between 2 liars from New York.
Only Trump is from New York. Clinton just lives there. (Of course, Trump lives in Florida…)
Intercept has yet to put forth a worth while article about Trump. As a quasi MSM periodical it hangs between the alternative media and CNN or Fox. It certainly does not represent anything daring! What a shame.
And what angle are you proposing is ‘worth while’?
Maybe one that propose to shut-down his free-speech rights?
Or maybe one that promotes instigation of violence at is rallies?
How about one that suggest that rushing at Trump on stage is a worth while endeavor?
Oh Lin, try to stay sober until after you get done posting here. You and William both like Trump.
I think things could get pretty special between you two <3
Most of the articles about Trump here are simply rewritten MSM whose tasked with smearing Trump. We have the Republican Party attempting to deny the voters their choice and the Democrat Party giving Hilary a big bunch of super-delegates– proving what the Northwestern and Princeton study said, viz. the USA is an oligarchy. I believe Greenwald could pen a few decent articles, but then I believe he is going along with the oligarchy since his boss is one! His judgement regarding Obama back in ’08 was off; now his judgement regarding Trump is likewise off. There is a difference between the person Trump and what the oligarchy wants people to think.
What, like a review of his claims on how he’s going to bring manufacturing back to America? I rather doubt those claims, based on his previous actions – like trying to shut down the Scottish wind industry, because he doesn’t want his hotel-golf course guests to have to see wind turbines in the distance?
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/12/donald-trump-scotland-golf/421065/
“The latest blow came this week, when the U.K. Supreme Court rejected his efforts to block the installation of wind turbines off the coast of Aberdeen, which Trump argued would sully Scotland’s pristine beauty—and the view from his golf development.”
He doesn’t really have a jobs policy, it’s just something that he thinks his supporters will buy into. His conception on energy policy is just as bad – go back to coal? Expanded domestic oil production? That’s a huge ecological and economic disaster; China is leading the world in renewable energy manufacturing and that’s the direction the world is heading in. He’s just a opportunistic self-promoting blowhard who has little to offer beside luxury hotels and “really fantastic” golf courses (which are built by and staffed with cheap immigrant labor).
You really have to be a sucker to buy into the Trump rhetoric. Of course, Hillary Clinton is hardly more believable when she says she’s going to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US – what’s her plan on that? A few tax breaks for Wall Street, that’s supposed to change anything?
I am not surprised by the British court’s decision. I do not favor wind power for a number of reasons. Coal is better than nuclear power which Obama favors. China is a long way from clean energy and meanwhile is a huge polluter. I do not get the impression that you actually know what Trump would do. You just do not like him.
“I do not favor wind power for a number of reasons.”
A number of reasons like what? Renewable energy will undercut your dinosaur fossil fuel investments? You like breathing smokestack emissions, huffing on sulfur and ash and mercury and arsenic? Ye gods. . .
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/03/17/us/politics/obama-supreme-court-nominee.html?action=click&contentCollection=Politics®ion=Footer&module=WhatsNext&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&moduleDetail=undefined&pgtype=Multimedia&referer=http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/03/16/us/politics/garland-supreme-court-nomination.html?_r=0
President nominates domestic terror (current DOJ definition includes animal rights, open government, environmental activists) prosecutor for supreme court. Nominee tears up in CNN statement about commitment to US Constitution…
WELL…In brief remarks, Judge Garland emotionally described his legal career as a prosecutor and a judge, saying that “fidelity to the Constitution and the law have been the cornerstone of my professional life.” He said that if the Senate confirmed him, he promised to “continue on that course.”
Well we certainly hope so BUT… The Oklahoma City bombing case in 1995 helped shape Judge Garland’s professional life. He coordinated the Justice Department’s response, starting the case against the bombers and eventually supervising their prosecution.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/us/politics/28garland.html?referer=http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/03/17/us/politics/obama-supreme-court-nominee.html?action=click&contentCollection=Politics®ion=Footer&module=WhatsNext&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&moduleDetail=undefined&pgtype=Multimedia&referer=http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/03/16/us/politics/garland-supreme-court-nomination.html?_r=0
Of couse we can only hope his commitment to the US Constitution and Bill of Rights is as he describes it in article #1.
That compartmentalized wet job was witnessed in part by an office worker named Jane Graham. You can hear her relate what she saw, involving a crew who had federal passes as maintenance workers operating out of a beat up looking station wagon parked in the underground garage, and what to her looked like sticks of gray “putty,” in the days leading up to the event, here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGdtgotcZdw
Only two months before, then Sen. Biden had first attempted to introduce into Congress the legislation that 6 years later he revealed was his own bill.
The U.S. corporate media is sorely in need of antitrust enforcement, divestment of local stations, breakup of the conglomerates, such that the local stations become independent of Wall Street control. All you have now is a centralized propaganda system that obeys the wishes of Wall Street controllers – much like the old Soviet Union’s Ministry of Propaganda, obedient to the dictates of the Central Party Committee.
https://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=CBS+Major+Holders
From wikipedia: “An old Soviet joke was that “there is no information in Izvestia, there is no truth in Pravda,” Izvestia meaning information and Pravda meaning truth. Thus, the Russian populace regarded the major publications with a great deal of cynicism. The papers were, however, information transmission belts, so people would try to decipher what was going on by reading them.”
Works the same way here today – getting a grasp of the factual news is like looking for a few coins hidden under a pile of dog poop. Mostly what you get out of paying attention to corporate media is an understanding of what kind of BS agenda is being fed to the public that day. This is an across the board phenomenon, from ‘liberal’ to ‘conservative’, whether it be the Op-Ed page of the NYTimes or the pundits on FOXNews or the think-tank ‘experts’ spewing forth on NPR, they all march in step on issues like “the glories and wisdom of free trade deals”. What Wall Street wants to hear, that is.
When outlets not controlled by the corporate left give you factual news, you choose not to believe it, you cover your ears, you shout it down, you giggle.
Yes, FOX News, heartthrob of the corporate left. . . or Sheldon Adelson, right-wing billionaire activist, taking over control of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, turning it into a mouthpiece for his Vegas business interests? Yes, he’s a Trump supporter, too:
“Trump is a businessman. I am a businessman. He employs a lot of people. I employed 50,000 people. Why not?”. . . .Adelson was speaking at a gala in honor of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has signaled he supports Trump, though he hasn’t officially endorsed him. ”
Yes, Giuliani, the tough-on-crime right-wing anti-drug crusader – who, after leaving office, got busy lobbying the DEA not to pursue criminal charges against Oxycontin maker Purdue Pharma for unregulated sales of their addictive opiate pills to shady ‘pain clinics’ in Florida and elsewhere. Got a paid a few million for that gig, I believe.
What you have on your beloved ‘right’ is a pack of shady two-faced hypocrites, but there’s always some sucker ready to swallow it all, hook line and sinker.
And yes, big leftist (including neocon) media is Jewish controlled: Moonves; even Murdoch’s mother was Jewish.
Fractal wrongness
Jesus was Jewish, you know – I mean, his parents weren’t atheists, were they? Nor were they Roman polytheists who worshipped Zeus-Jupiter, Venus-Aphrodite, etc. So, all Christians are Jewish by descent. We are also all Africans, by descent. That’s where human beings originated (yes, that means we evolved from an earlier biological ancestor that also gave rise to chimpanzees and gorillas), and then spread around the world from there.
Isn’t history and science fun?
Jesus was a Hebrew. I doubt we are all
Africans by descent. Just a theory. Evolution is also just a theory.
I’m not sure if you were being snarky, joking or serious … but:
http://www.notjustatheory.com/
Yeah, so what?