By Dustin Slaughter
The Sunlight Foundation revealed last week that KYW News has received over $517,000 for airing candidates’ and interest groups’ political ads since the start of election season. According to the Foundation’s Kathy Kiely:
The 30-second spots that aired on KYW’s evening newscast on Oct. 16 cost between $700 and $765 apiece.
The financial windfall for the station, which has been a staple of Philadelphia’s news landscape for many years, has naturally left a dearth of actual news on campaigns, candidates, and outside interests, as the station tries to accommodate the large influx of purchased spots.
Kiely writes:
In the course of one 30-minute newscast on KYW last week, viewers were bombarded with no fewer than 11 political ads, most of them negative. The news program, which aired at 6 p.m. on Oct. 16, featured no political news stories, although in three weeks voters in the region will be heading to the polls to make decisions on the contests that were the subject of the political ads[…]
The Philly Declaration 
