Given that Edwards has opted into public financing, Chris Bowers asks why he shouldn’t go with cable, as opposed to over the air broadcast:

One estimate from PQM Media estimated that in 2004 the commercial advertising world put 4 dollars of advertising dollars on cable for every 5 for traditional broadcast television. This study found the ratio in politics to be 1 dollar on cable for every 18 on broadcast. (check). Given the billions spent in politics every two years on television advertising, this was clearly a problem that needed addressing.

Our research showed that the reason why the commercial world had shifted tens of billions of advertising dollars to cable was simple – more people today watch cable than broadcast, and it offers much more precise demographic and geographic targeting than traditional broadcast television. The latter is particularly important for politics, since geographic targets do not fit neatly into the more than 200 media markets across the country.

The answer is very simple: the corrupt nature of the political consultant class. Political consultants are paid on the basis of a percentage of ad buys, at least on the Democratic side (I think that this is changing on the Republican side).

Simply put, it’s not in the personal best interest of those consultant to look at cable. More bang for the buck means less profits for them. These people are very comfortable win or lose, and so they frequently lose.