Let’s say you are a presidential candidate. (Odds are you might be.) And let’s say you want to run the same ad at least twice every half-hour*. Since you’re mostly likely in that group with a percentage smaller than the margin of error, you need a cheap consultant and/or a blogger to crib research off of to maximize your reach.
What I’m trying to say is: I’ve updated the county table and maps for Iowa’s broadcast affiliates. This process has come a long way from when I started, when I had to physically visit the broadcast area to take notes during the news or rely on notes from people there.
Most of this was done in September. Since the last time I did a complete run-through, the following has happened:
- The Des Moines stations do a lot more of statewide maps. This meant, for the most part, I had to leave their data alone for now.
- KIMT and KTTC whacked off their tier of counties at the base of north-central Iowa.
- KWWL went down to the bare minimum for eastern Iowa.
- The Quad Cities stations fiddled with their edges.
- WOWT restored the overlap with WHO, putting the Omaha stations in sync with each other.
- In total, I made 35 additions/subtractions to 29 counties, not counting KGAN including 11 fringe counties in its warning map but not in its main map.
- And there were ownership changes, and subchannel additions, but that’s out of the realm of this post.
When all of the above is taken into consideration, we have a new champion for best station coverage/worst change of venue site: Carroll County, receiving love from all nine stations in the Des Moines, Omaha, and Sioux City areas. On the other extreme, poor Van Buren County is down to two stations, period.
(And then, when it’s time for the general election, I’d prepare for pouring a bunch of money into the Duluth-Superior market that blankets northern Wisconsin and the Iron Range. But that’s just me, and —
In this case the dark psychic forces are the ones autoplaying video.)
* Three days of Jeopardy, ten weeks before the caucuses, in order: Yang, Bernie, Steyer, Biden, Pete, Warren; Yang, Pete, Steyer, Bullock, Yang, Biden; Yang, Pete, Yang, Bernie, Biden, Bernie, Yang, Bullock, Bullock. And, on two of the three days, also an ad against Sen. Joni Ernst.
PRE-PUBLISH UPDATE: A week before Thanksgiving, WHO changed its entire graphics package. I happened to have seen the same style/system a few weeks earlier, on WISH-TV of Indianapolis. It’s very light-backgrounded and uses super-super-basic weather icons (the Jony Ive-ization of weather graphics and chyrons, if you will). That allowed me to make tweaks along the edges of its map, all eliminations, including Tama County.