Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 29, 1995 TAG: 9510270121
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Print shop owner Mike Cunningham's cash register is ringing. His printing presses are humming; his workers are on overtime.
Cunningham is literally up to his elbows in business. Bundles of leaflets, brochures, mailers and handbills are stacked around his Kwik-Kopy Printing Center on Peters Creek Road.
Political candidates from all over the Roanoke region - would-be senators, delegates, sheriffs and supervisors - are spending their campaign war chests. And throughout the valley, it's money in the pockets of people like Cunningham.
In September alone, nearly 9 percent Kwik-Kopy's business came from candidates.
"We always look forward to election years," Cunningham said, estimating he's printed 150,000 political brochures since May. "Thank God Virginia's got a lot of them."
Political campaigns are about messages to voters. But behind the words are the mechanics of delivering them. That takes money.
With four major General Assembly races in the valley this year and more than a dozen other lower-echelon races, political fund raising and spending are breaking records.
The campaigns for three of the four Roanoke Valley General Assembly seats are among the highest-spending races in Virginia.
It's safe to estimate that more than $1 million will have been raised and spent by Roanoke-area politicians before Nov. 7, based on reports from candidates reflecting funds raised through the end of September.
For example, through Sept. 30, Sen. Brandon Bell, R-Roanoke County, raised $175,000 for his campaign. By Election Day, Bell's Democratic opponent, Roanoke Vice Mayor John Edwards, will have raised and spent more than $100,000, according to his campaign manager, Harry Carver.
Candidates spend money to raise money. That's business for hotel banquet rooms, caterers, bartenders and musicians.
From the net, a general rule of thumb in politics is that $4 out of every $5 spent will go to advertising, said James Faulkner, manager of Bell's re-election bid.
The typical media for the messages are direct-mail brochures, television and radio commercials, yard signs, billboards and bumper stickers.
Less typical is a strategy employed by House Republican challenger Newell Falkinburg. On two occasions this year, he's hired an airplane to fly over Roanoke and Salem, towing a "Falkinburg for Delegate" banner - at $400 a pop.
"You need to keep your overhead - rent, phone, office expenses and salaries - to about 20 percent," Faulkner said. "So the rest goes to voter contact and information."
Gary Peterson, manager of Copy Cat on Franklin Road, estimates that all of the 25 to 30 Roanoke-area print shops are seeing jumps in business because of the number of contested races in November's elections.
That's primarily because they print materials that candidates mail directly to residents, a frequently used form of political advertising that allows candidates to tailor messages to different groups of voters.
"We're all benefiting, but probably to different degrees," Peterson said.
But this year, spending in the Roanoke Valley is most intense on television and radio advertising.
That's because Roanoke is a relatively compact market, Faulkner said. Rates for television commercials are far less expensive than in major cities like Washington D.C.
The sheer volume of dollars flowing into television and radio stations has surprised even veteran professionals in the field. By early last week, total paid-in-advance political ads on Roanoke-area radio and TV outlets was nearing $400,000.
WDBJ (Channel 7) has taken more than half of that total, while the Roanoke-based television station, WSLS (Channel 10) has gotten about $85,000 of the business. Candiates also have spent more than $26,000 buying ads on cable networks through Cox Communications.
More orders are coming in every day, said George Bassett, director of sales and marketing for WDBJ.
"It's a lot more than we expected - about five times more than we expected," Bassett said. General Assembly candidates "are usually not big TV advertisers."
All by himself, Falkinburg has sunk more than $50,000 into commercial spots on WDBJ. That's more than double what his Democratic opponent, Del. Clifton "Chip" Woodrum, had ordered by early last week.
Bassett said the additional money probably will improve the privately held station's revenues for the final quarter. The ads don't cost the station large amounts of additional overhead.
But that money is something of a two-edged sword. Under federal law, all broadcast outlets are required to sell candidates the air time at the lowest rates they charge other advertisers. Those rates normally are reserved for high-volume customers who advertise year-round.
"Television stations have a finite amount of inventory. We just can't add pages like [newspapers] can," Bassett said. That has the effect of restricting choices for large commercial advertisers such as supermarkets, because they may not be able to get the time slots they want. That can cost a station the goodwill of those regular customers.
Radio time, which is far cheaper than television, also is being bought at a fast clip. Through Tuesday, candidates around the Roanoke region had purchased more than $75,000 worth of time on five major local radio stations.
"I don't think we've ever had such a mass of so many political contests," said Mike Slenski, vice president and general manager of rock 'n' roll station WROV-FM. The station has sold $15,000 worth of ads in recent weeks.
Some of it has come from candidates who have never before bought ads on the music station before, such as House Majority Leader Richard Cranwell, D-Roanoke County.
Slenski thinks the additional business will improve WROV's bottom line about 3 percent this quarter. Terrilynn Hardman, advertising manager for WFIR-AM and WPVR-FM, estimates that those numbers will be higher at other radio outlets.
"It depends upon the station, but probably among the top five stations in the market, we're talking anywhere from 20 to 30 percent in additional revenue.
"It's important revenue to a lot of radio stations," she added. "I don't like to call it gravy. It's additional revenue that you count on but you don't count on."
By contrast, candidates are largely staying away from advertising in newspapers. "We get very little," said Don Porterfield, retail advertising manager for The Roanoke Times. That's because candidates get plenty of attention in news columns, which Portfield calls "free media."
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