Just ask Dwight Morris, the former Los Angeles Times reporter who now runs the Campaign Study Group. Morris studied more than 1,400 House and Senate races waged between '90 and '94. The cost of individual TV ads is not the reason why campaign costs have soared. Broadcasters would like to see the level of political discourse enhanced, as evidenced by the thousands of hours of free time each election season in the form of news coverage, candidate profiles, public affairs programming and debates. That's the type of coverage valued by the American people, rather than a federally-mandated free time plan that would simply enable politicians to double up on negative attack ads.
Broadcasters have a great tradition of voluntarily offering free time for debates.
The dirty little secret is that politicians have an equally long tradition of rejecting those offers. One of the major candidates declined the offer, even after contending he could not buy all the ad time he was seeking. Last year, Laabs went a step further, orchestrating a multi-state debate between the GOP presidential hopefuls on the eve of Wisconsin's March 12 primary. Primaries were slated all over the country that month, so Laabs won the cooperation of broadcast associations in 12 other states, with dozens of television stations agreeing to run the program live. The value of the debate time was in the millions of dollars.