Anyone who happened to be near a working television in South Carolina over the weekend was exposed to one of the most concentrated and expensive barrages of political advertising that this state has ever experienced.
With the traditional efforts of candidates now multiplied by the presence of the well-financed “super PACs” supporting them, political operatives outbid and outmaneuvered one another in a last-minute race to buy up what time remained on the airwaves between now and the state’s Republican presidential primary on Saturday. None would risk having their messages drowned out by those of their rivals.
Want to advertise on “60 Minutes,” as Mr. Romney did on Sunday? His campaign had to get WLTX, the CBS station here, to bump a super PAC that was actually running ads supporting him. It agreed to pay $3,000 for a 30-second slot — $100 a second, almost double the usual rate.
Rick Santorum, running as a family-values social conservative, put his campaign’s money into the Hollywood machine he so often denounces, booking time on NBC during the Golden Globes and “30 Rock.” He also bought ads during “Saturday Night Live,” which has mocked him and his ubiquitous sweater vest.
And super PACs, eager to be seen during the N.F.L. playoff game on Saturday featuring the Denver Broncos’ Tim Tebow, bought up slots that were spoken for weeks ago, paying premiums to knock advertisers like Hardee’s, Jeep and the Ford Motor Company to later times.
“It’s like carpet-bombing,” said Scott Sanders, general sales manager for WIS, the NBC station in Columbia. “They’re waiting until the last two weeks to reach everyone they can. He who shouts the loudest last might win.”
The arms race at television stations across South Carolina is the most vivid manifestation yet of the influx of outside money into American politics this election cycle. Because of a Supreme Court decision that paved the way for the creation of the super PACs — groups that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money advocating for a candidate as long as they do not coordinate with the campaign — the messaging wars are reaching new levels of intensity.
Five Republican presidential candidates are advertising on television here. In addition, seven super PACs have run commercials alongside them. (Mr. Romney has two groups taking up his cause, Restore Our Future and Citizens for a Working America. And a PAC supporting Jon M. Huntsman Jr., who informed his advisers on Sunday that he intended to drop out of the race, has been advertising here, though Mr. Huntsman himself has not.)
Candidates and super PACs have committed about $8 million to advertising here on broadcast TV since the beginning of December, according to figures provided by a Republican strategist who closely monitors media spending. In 2008, when five Republican candidates were spending heavily here, the amount spent on broadcast TV was $6.9 million, according to Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group. With the addition of three Democratic candidates, the total in 2008 was $13.5 million.
When radio and cable television are factored in this year, the total committed so far approaches $11 million.
Kantar Media added up the number of times Republican presidential campaign commercials appeared on broadcast television here in 2008: 17,629. As of late Friday afternoon, with eight days to go until the primary, Kantar had counted 13,398 commercials, meaning the 2012 total will outpace 2008, probably by a significant amount, because advertising tends to be heaviest in the final week of a campaign.
“It seems to be one after the other,” said Kim Matthews, 34, a Mount Pleasant resident who was watching the Broncos game on Saturday night with her husband in downtown Charleston. A Restore Our Future ad had just appeared. “They’re everywhere,” Ms. Matthews said, “and I just keep thinking, ‘Eventually they’ll go away.’ ”
The spending is reaching record levels even though the candidates and the super PACs did not start advertising heavily here until last week, a departure from other years when commercials would start in the fall.
“What you’ve got is two and a half months of advertising compressed into a two-week period of time,” said Rich O’Dell, the general manager of WLTX, the CBS station in Columbia. Mr. O’Dell said that he had thought campaigns might forgo television advertising in South Carolina this year, as many did in New Hampshire. Then, he said, “as soon as Iowa was over: boom.”
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