Trump has figured out how to provoke coverage
As we’ve just seen in the GOP primary, Donald Trump has figured out television commercials aren’t quite as necessary as usual if you can get your message out in between the commercial breaks.
He basically makes the television media cover him just about every day by offering some new controversy or revelation; he’s mastered the art of attaching himself to breaking news. A plane disappears, he asserts that it’s terrorism, and then a good chunk of the coverage is, “is this premature, did he jump the gun,” etc.
.. What really ought to worry Republicans is that Obama put his money into infrastructure and very targeted TV advertising — Lifetime, the Food Network, etc. — while Romney spent his ad dollars in broadcast television, and we saw how that worked out. Trump and the RNC need a GOTV infrastructure, and Trump claimed that stuff is “overrated.”
For example, right now there is no organized Trump general-election campaign staff in Ohio: