The coolest thing since challah french toast ...
Check out The Living Room Candidate, an online repository of presidential TV campaign ads hosted by the American Museum of the Moving Image. This has been on a number of political and tech blogs, but in addition to being a wonderful timesuck/source of trivia (Harry Belafonte did TV ads with JFK??? How many markets did that play in?), it could/would/can be a wonderful resource for reporters on the campaign beat, political commentators/columnists and others in the newsroom. Not to mention political science/communications/journalism faculty and students, history teachers and others.
There's also election results mapped out (red/blue state paradigm) along with numbers. Transcripts accompany each video. The only disappointing part is that the repository only includes the ads of the two major presidential candidates (with the exception of Ross Perot ads from 1992) in the post-primary season -- so you won't find the range of commercials aired during contested primaries. Still, this is a wonderful tool that will be the basis for more electronic archiving/preservation/access to past, present and hopefully future campaign material.
Comments
In a perfect world we'd get more online repository like this one...
Posted by: Jozef | July 12, 2004 06:22 PM
While studying American Political Science at uni, our lecturer brought in a tape of ads through the years that he had taped off the TV. We were shocked and enthralled, we'd never seen anything like it! Australian ads are very tame in comparison to the out-and-out bashing of the competitor that is in some of the American ads.
This archive is wonderful.
Posted by: Fiona | July 13, 2004 08:19 PM
Not only is this really cool, but challah French toast sounds really yummy. I guess I can use the website to distract myself from the craving you just generated.... :)
Posted by: Vera | July 15, 2004 06:20 PM