Obama Negotiates 30-minute Tv Spot With Cbs, Nbc and Fox

Barack Obama will use his financial superiority over John McCain to dominate the airwaves in the final days of the US election with a half-hour, prime-time special.

Campaign officials said today that they were negotiating with CBS, NBC and Fox television for a half-hour broadcast on October 29, six days before Americans go to the polls. The media blitz represents the most ambitious - and by far the costliest - use of media in a presidential election.

"Strategically, this is about as big a megaphone as money will buy at this point," said Evan Tracey of the Campaign Media Analysis Group. "Obama, as a former lawyer, will probably make a fairly well articulated closing argument with the production value of a Steven Spielberg movie."

He estimated the cost of airtime would be at least $1m (£590,000) for each network.

Former candidates have departed from the traditional advertising format to buy blocks of airtime. In 1992, Ross Perot bought time on network television and Hillary Clinton paid for an hour-long town hall special on Lifetime television, a cable network aimed at women, during the Democratic primary campaign.

McCain, who took public financing, is on an $84m budget for these elections. Obama has no such constraints. The candidate this week increased his spending on television advertising to $3m a day, and is expected to spend even more as the election approaches. The McCain camp, in contrast, spent about $1.6m a day.

In some key battlegrounds, such as northern Virginia or southern Florida, that amounts to a four-to-one advantage for Obama in airtime.

In an attempt to compete, the McCain camp has resorted to trying to use the media to find an audience for its ads. In recent days, the Republicans have put out daily video releases. The so-called ads are seldom aired on television and instead rely on YouTube or cable television news broadcasts to find an audience.

Today's offering from the McCain camp again showed the Republican stepping up the negative tone of his ads. The ad, which the McCain camp said would be aired nationally, directly accuses Obama of lying about his association with former 60s-era radical Bill Ayers.

Obama's purchase practically guarantees the Democrat a huge prime-time audience because of prior media coverage, as well as analysis after it is aired.

The prime-time programming also increases McCain's bind. If he tries to match Obama in making his own closing argument, the Republican will have to make hard choices about pulling some of his television ads in battleground states.

There were few immediate details today about the content of the program. It is widely assumed that the broadcast is intended to make Obama appear presidential. That means he is unlikely to resort to the negative tone of McCain's public appearances.

Joel Rivlin, a political consultant, argued that the broadcast, which will extend far beyond the battleground states, could help Obama drive up his popular vote.

If he were elected, that would allow Obama to claim a greater mandate to lead - which could help the Democrat in the current economic and political climate.

"Maybe it talks to him trying to run up the score in order to get more of a mandate to govern," Rivlin said. "It could be something to do with increasing his popular vote nationally."