COMMUNICATIONS-MEXICO:
The Ripe Business of TV and Elections
Diego Cevallos
MEXICO CITY, Jul 14 (IPS) - The costs to the state of election campaigns in
Mexico are among the highest in the world, and it is the major television
networks that cash in on the situation.
Mexico's two leading television corporations, Televisa and Azteca, took in
more than 45 million dollars as a result of the legislative elections held
earlier this month.
For these companies, the earnings for broadcasting the political parties'
campaign ads - in the run-up to elections to renew the 500 seats of the
Chamber of Deputies - were just under the totals recorded for other moments
of maximum viewership, such as the football World Cup, when advertising
costs skyrocket.
In Mexico, political parties' campaigns are financed by the state, such that
the money paid to the TV networks comes from the Mexican taxpayers.
And, in what can perhaps be seen as adding insult to injury, the expenditure
did not produce the result of higher voter turnout sought by the officials
who decided to spend the public's money.
Just 40 percent of the 65 million people registered to vote cast their
ballots on Jul. 6, and nearly all parties received fewer votes than in the
elections three years ago, when President Vicente Fox and legislators were
elected.
The television industry fills its pockets with state money in exchange for
broadcasting political messages whose effectiveness is questionable due to
their low quality and excessive repetition, political scientist Alejandro
Carrión told IPS.
Mexico's 11 registered political parties this year received 461 million
dollars from the Federal Electoral Institute. According to the rules, the
parties could spend a combined total of no more than 254 million dollars on
advertising of any kind.
The electoral cost of the political parties to the Mexican state is among
the highest in the world.
For comparison, in Brazil the state earmarks less than 40 million dollars
annually for the country's political parties, and in Argentina the figure is
no more than 20 million dollars. (Mexico's population is 100 million,
Brazil's 170 million and Argentina's 37 million.)
In other countries, such as Chile and the United States, parties do not
receive direct funding from the government.
According to calculations by experts and to figures reported by the TV
networks themselves, Televisa took in some 35 million dollars and Azteca
pocketed 10 million dollars during the recent electoral campaign.
Overall, Mexico's political parties spent 60 million dollars on campaign
advertising in the mass media, including radio, print, Internet and
television.
This month's federal elections were the first since the end of the reign of
the PRI, which ruled Mexico uninterrupted from 1929 to 2000. Nevertheless,
the public showed little interest in voting.
Official figures show that abstention rates were the highest ever recorded
for mid-term elections.
But abstention rates are of little consequence to the television networks.
In a June report on Mexico, the investment risk firm Standard & Poor's
predicted that the Mexican media would maintain "moderate growth" in keeping
with the development of local markets and as a result of the additional
revenues generated by the legislative elections.
It is the big TV networks that win in the Mexican democracy, because they
receive millions of dollars as a result of the flood of advertising
purchased by the political parties, Armando Contreras, communications and
political expert at the private La Salle University, said in comments to
IPS.
These are ads that - with a handful of exceptions - are not of highest
quality. And during the campaign they are repeated with such frequency that
they end up harming the image of the candidate and the party, instead of
producing the desired benefits at the ballot box, said Contreras.
The "insipid and deceptive" campaign ads that Mexicans were subjected to in
the lead-up to Jul. 6 included messages devoid of political proposals, and
"made as if for a mentally retarded audience," thus alienating the
citizenry, political expert José Crespo, of the Centre for Economic Research
and Instruction, said in an interview with Proceso, a weekly.
In Contreras' opinion, for the sake of the country's democracy, Mexican
politicians should seek greater contact with the voters and disseminate more
information on their political platforms, instead of staking their electoral
bets on ads devoid of content.
Ironically, on the news programmes of Televisa and Azteca - whose combined
annual sales top 2.0 billion dollars - the networks' representative
criticised the legislative candidates' platforms for being too general, and
their advertising spots for being so shabbily produced.
But the TV networks' poor opinions of the electoral campaigns did not stand
in the way of their reaping profits from them.
(END/2003)
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