“I don’t believe it is possible for the Libertarian Party to use TV”.
By Melinda Pillsbury-Foster, Chair
Freedom Interactive TV Networks Association, Inc.
There are probably numerous reasons the Libertarian National Committee and Libertarian candidates from local to presidential do not have their own TV shows. Strangely enough, however, we don’t know what these perceived reasons are because not one Libertarian has returned a call to us in thirty-eight years.
Libertarians could believe, “TV is too Expensive”; “the liberals who dominate the airways won’t let us on”; “corporate fascist media won’t let us on”; or, “there are no libertarians in media.” We can’t say because all we ever got was a shuffle off to a functionary who did not return calls or emails.
We have a list of their names, however. These are supposed advocates of the free market, who don’t understand competition.
So how did Bill Clinton overturn the most popular (89%) sitting president in history on a budget of $50,000 starting in late March 1992? Curious? You are about to find out.
Sometimes these wrinkles in history hold amazing insights. This is such a wrinkle.
1992 was the year the most likely Democratic candidates hung back from running because of the awe-inspiring popularity President George H. W. Bush then enjoyed.
Bill Clinton was a small-time Southern governor with little to recommend him and scandals a plenty back in Arkansas. One of these had smacked him hard in January, Gennifer Flowers.
The Emmy-worthy performance of Hillary on 60 minutes, as good as that was, was not good enough to stem the flow of questions and the drop in donations to the Clinton Campaign. It was looking grim, with Jerry Brown, a late entry, coming up fast. SEE The Real Story (bottom of the page)
Desperate, Clinton’s Media Consultant Frank Greer, received an offer for free satellite time which had come in to the campaign from PhoneVoter TV Network.
Clearly, what Clinton needed was to evade the offer of FREE Satellite Time, which would allow all sorts of embarrassing and fatal comments from those gathered to hear him and respond with phone tallies and interactive voice messages. So, Bill, pretending to be a fellow named Charles Marcus, who was not involved in politics in any way, but whose name was familiar to everyone, and Greer pumped Brock for information on how to obtain satellite time when their campaign war chest was down to $50,000.
Brock agreed to help them, assuming they intended to use PhoneVoter’s Unedited Presidential Speeches, and taught the two, both entirely ignorant of the realities of TV scheduling, costs, production and using this in conjunction with other technologies everything they needed to know. Clinton learned how to be his own host in a Road Show format in diners across America. Brock generously told them and went off to find what he learned was the last available Satellite Uplink Truck in the country.
Brock would receive the contract arrangement fee, through Keystone Satellite Communication, the company also providing the free satellite time to all candidates. Soon afterward, the truck was toddling along with the Clinton Road Show, the clips sent on to News Directors carefully edited in advance reaching 10-million people per day. No Interactivity was used.
The next article will be on the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidates and the LNC.
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