Primary doing a number Indiana TV ad inventory

The May 6 primary is severely limiting TV ad inventory--good news for broadcasters, but not such great news for advertisers. The bottom line is that if you're interested in being on the air in the next couple of weeks, you're out of luck--and even if you've already booked space, you still may be out of luck.

The reason? Political ads preempt everything else, regardless of when you reserved your space. If the Clinton, Daniels, Long-Thompson, McCain, Obama, or Schellinger campaigns want your time slot, it's theirs--and there's nothing you can do about it.

One example: we had booked space for a southern Indiana client a few weeks ago, and we found out yesterday that 15 of the spots were being preempted. Our only option was to reschedule them for after the primary if we wanted them to run at all.

Expect the same problem in October, as the general election draws near. That means rates will be high, and you'll want to have a Plan B. In fact, if you don't have to run TV spots in October, it's probably a good month to avoid altogether.