Westman’s thin media problematic

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/09/2011 (5323 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BRANDON — “How are you supposed to win an election if the media aren’t paying attention to the campaign and you can’t reach the voters through conventional advertising?”

That question was posed to me last week by a candidate in a southwestern Manitoba riding. It’s a question a lot of candidates and their campaign teams are asking, with less than a month before Manitoba’s Oct. 4 election.

With fewer media outlets in the region, shrinking newsrooms and an explosion in viewing and listening options competing for voters’ attention, it has become much more difficult for Westman candidates to get their message out to voters.

Another candidate’s campaign manager — a person with decades of election campaign experience — told me that “if you schedule a news conference or some sort of media event in Brandon, you’re lucky if three reporters show up. At the most. Outside of Brandon, you’re lucky if anybody from the media shows up. They’re just spread so thin nowadays, and the loss of CKX has only made it worse.”

CKX television was western Manitoba’s only local television station. After a series of ownership changes, it ceased operations in October 2009.

Though the three networks have attempted to provide some news coverage of the region from their Winnipeg bases, it falls short of the level that CKX provided. In its prime, CKX had as many as five reporters travelling throughout Westman and provided televised news coverage to its viewers through live newscasts three times each weekday.

That news coverage represented a zero-cost daily opportunity for candidates to get their name, face and message in front of voters during prime time. For an articulate candidate, it was electoral gold. For the first time in more than half a century, that opportunity is gone.

The campaign consequences of CKX’s closure are compounded by the fact the station was also Westman’s only provider of local television advertising — meaning it is now impossible for a candidate in a Westman riding to create his or her own television ads for broadcast to local voters.

While Westman candidates can hope that voters will see election news coverage and their respective parties’ advertising on Winnipeg’s TV stations (available via cable), the odds of that happening are much lower than in previous elections.

Long gone are the days when Manitobans’ viewing options were limited to only a handful of local stations. Voters can now choose from hundreds of television channels provided by a variety of cable and satellite television companies. With so many viewing options available to them — and many popular shows beginning new seasons this month — it is unlikely a significant percentage of voters will be watching the three or four local channels that will broadcast Manitoba news and election ads.

The fact that over-the-air broadcasting is currently being brought to an end is yet another blow to candidates, given that many rural Westman residents, especially seniors, still rely on rabbit ears for their television signal.

With all of those changes and challenges, what do candidates do? How do they campaign when it’s much more difficult to get voters’ attention?

Some Westman campaigns are pouring more money into radio advertising, but the strategy is hobbled by voters’ increasing use of satellite radio, along with the absence of a dominant local radio station that reaches all age brackets.

“We’re going back to the basics of campaigning,” the campaign manager told me. “We’re buying a supply of newspaper ads that we can change as the campaign evolves and we’re going to rely on door-to-door campaigning. There is no substitute for door-to-door.”

The candidate I spoke to has been knocking on doors in his riding for months, while his opponents are only just getting started. “They’re too late and they don’t have enough people to do it effectively,” he said.

“With all of the other things that candidates have to do in September, and all of the things that voters are busy with, it’s going to be very difficult for them to do the door-to-door work they should have been doing all summer.

“You can’t fix that with advertising that nobody sees and nobody hears.”

Deveryn Ross is a political

commentator based in Brandon.