The Obama Show, a 30-minute Oprah-style infomercial that was broadcast on seven television networks on Wednesday night, was criticized by many as an unnecessarily extravagant home-media invasion. But in reality, the TV air time was pretty cheap for the Obama campaign.
The primetime show attracted more than 33 million viewers for a rumored/reported cost of somewhere between $3 million and $7 million. CBS, NBC and Fox were rumored to get a million bucks each for the half-hour of air time. Let's assume, liberally, that Obama paid similar sums to the other networks (BET, MSNBC, TV One and Univision) -- if that's the case, he paid roughly 21 cents per viewer.
As a basis of comparison, Superbowl 2008 advertisers reportedly paid an average of $2.7 million for 30-second spots, and the game was watched by an estimated 97.5 million viewers.
