I have a feeling political marketing is going to dominate AndyBoyer.com for the next few months.  There are a lot of interesting comparisons between business and political marketing.  So please allow me to indulge myself by discussing an issue that I don’t know if anyone else has even noticed.    

Have you ever asked yourself, on a primary night, how are all the candidates able to be seen live on Cable News Networks? Wouldn’t they all want to go on about 30 minutes before the late news, in order to get their sound bites on, but also have East Coast and West Coast Audiences watch live.  Plus, the networks need to know when they are going on, so they know when to run their commercials.

So, how do they decide?  How does all this get communicated? Are there simply gentleman’s rules that everyone follows?  Maybe the winners get the choice time slots? But how do you choose if you split the primaries up for grabs that night?

So for the sake of the rest of this article, let’s assume that every night the Communications Directors talk to each other and decide what time each candidate will go live.  And then they communicate the time and order to the networks.   

Here’s  the odd thing I’ve noticed, and I don;t know where to place the blame.  The last few weeks, Senator Obama has taken the last slot, usually starting a little before 10:40 ET.  But he is the ONLY candidate I have seen that does not wait for the candidate before him to finish.  Just as the candidate rolls toward his conclusion, Obama comes on his stage across town.  Then the news networks switch over to Obama, and we miss the conclusion.

So who’s fault is this?  Are the other candidates running long to try to derail Obama?  Or is Obama coming on stage early to derail other candidates?  Or is this just a silly coincidence? Keep a watch next week and let me know what you think.