Chris Bell & TV Ads: A Silver Lining

There has been endless pontificating about whether Chris Bell would or would not be on TV this week. I saw one of his ads on a Tyler station not more than two hours ago, so he’s still on TV, even though it seems as though everyone said he wouldn’t be.

And, though he’s not on every single commercial break (Carole Strayhorn, Rick Perry), but I think that there is actually an advantage to that.

Voters know who Chris is now. And, I believe there is a distinct advantage to not being in every commercial break or every other commercial break.

For example, if you live anywhere in Tyler, Longview, Jacksonville, Canton, Grand Saline, etc., you can recite word for word each one of Larry Durrett’s negative ads against Chuch Hopson even though a vast number of people who see the ads constantly aren’t even in the district. And, it’s bad news for Durrett. People have grown tremendously tired of the ads. But, Chris’s ads have’t just overly saturated viewers, so it’s something new and a new message. And, even though voters may not memorize the ads like people in East Texas have memorized Durrett’s hate-filled attacks of lies, they will remember them because they stood out as something different, something not repeated a million times and someone new.