• BusinessWeek, Friday, August 29, 2008 11:15 AM

The starting gun has sounded for a marathon of political advertising, worth about $2 billion, that will be spent between Labor Day and Election Day. It will be an exciting race for owners of local TV stations, poised to grab 70%, of that haul.

But 2008 has been so lousy that even $1 billion will not bring stations up to the revenue levels of last year. And 2007 was worse than 2006. Lehman Brothers analyst Anthony DiClemente forecasts another fall in stations' revenue in '09.

Politics is the last major ad category that slavishly worships TV, "but there are some situations that not even a roller-coaster, cash-crazed election cycle can salvage."

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