95 percent accurate*

Jackson jumps on cable (updated)

Democratic 19th Senate District candidate Hannah-Beth Jackson has made a major commitment to cable television advertising for the duration of the fall campaign.

Public documents detailing political advertising purchased from Time-Warner show that Jackson this week placed an order for $525,000 worth of cable advertising through the end of October. The ads will run on cable franchises in Ventura, Camarillo, Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley and Santa Clarita. The total number of 30-second spots: 29,736.

The spots will run on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, USA Network, ESPN and the History, Travel and Food channels.

(UPDATE: The campaign of Republican Tony Strickland, citing documents I have not seen, reports that Jackson's total cable TV ad buy, including Santa Barbara County, is for $805,000. It also says broadcast TV station documents, which I have also not seen, show $562,000 in ad purchases. That would total more than $1.3 million in television advertising.)

The Ventura County cable TV documents also show that the independent group called the California Taxpayer Protection Committee supplemented its broadcast TV attack ad against Jackson with about $15,000 in cable TV ads in Ventura and Los Angeles counties. Republican candidate Tony Strickland also supplemented his broadcast Olympics commercials with more than $4,000 in ads on cable channels that carried Olympics programming.

Of note: The firm that executed the advertising purchases for both Strickland and the independent group was Voter Strategies, a company run by Republican state Sen. Jim Battin of Palm Springs. Battin personally signed the contracts. Legislators are permitted to have outside sources of income while in office, and Battin's civilian job is consulting to political campaigns.

Posted by Timm Herdt at August 26, 2008 11:42 AM