GA for Mritty – guess I should have actually checked into it.
It does look like they made an effort to pull the ads.
I know that ad schedules are usually finalized for the week by Friday at 4pm. Most of the stations probably weren’t interested in pulling the ads because they didn’t want to run into an issue of the campaign asking for reciprocal time later.
Many times when ads don’t get run, due to the station’s error, the advertiser is entitled to have those ads played at a later date. I don’t see how that would be the case here, but why risk it with costly political ads.
Plus, telling all the stations that they needed to redo their airing schedules late Wednesday is no guarantee that they had the ads to fill the spaces purchased by the campaign.
Don’t get me wrong, it is disingenuous to say that the campaign needs to be suspended a month before the election, regardless of the reason. That’s like admitting that you can’t handle the extremely complex job of being president. It also makes me think that McCain may try to take a Presidential working holiday every August like Bush did to decompress from the pressures of office.