Sean Hannity’s million-dollar in-kind contribution to the GOP

On Oct 20, 2022

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Two Wednesdays ago, Fox News’s Sean Hannity began his show in characteristic format, criticizing President Biden and inveighing about the Biden administration’s efforts to lower gas prices. Various Fox personalities and contributors joined him to echo and amplify his rhetoric.

About a third of the way into his show, though, he pivoted. He began talking about the Senate race in Wisconsin, in which incumbent Sen. Ron Johnson (R) holds a narrow lead in polling. And then, lo and behold, Johnson appeared for an interview as friendly as it was concise. That out of the way, Hannity turned his attention to a different subject: the Senate race in Ohio. And there was Republican candidate J.D. Vance, ready to chat about his positions with the Fox News host.

A commercial break and then Mehmet Oz, Republican candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, was there to chat with Hannity. And when Oz was done, it was Rep. Ted Budd’s (R-N.C.) turn; he’s the GOP’s Senate nominee. In total, Hannity spent about 14 minutes of his show interviewing Republican Senate candidates — about a quarter of the full hour, even if you don’t take out the time spent showing ads.

“We’ll do the job of the media mob,” Hannity told his audience on Oct. 5 before his friendly chat with Oz: “We’ll vet the candidates.”

This is how Hannity has been spending his airtime of late: repeatedly welcoming and “interviewing” Republican candidates. He’s had 18 candidates on in the past two weeks, 13 of whom are Republicans running for Senate. Several candidates have appeared multiple times, including Johnson and Rep. Lee Zeldin, who’s running for governor of New York. On Monday, he took it a step further: dedicating the entirety of his show to a “town hall” with Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker, interspersing wiffle-ball-level questions to the candidate with chats with more established Republican politicians who joined Hannity and Walker on the stage.

In total, Hannity’s spent more than 97 minutes of his last 10 hours of airtime interviewing those 18 candidates — airtime that, again, includes more than 15 minutes of ads. In other words, he’s spent about a fifth of the total time he has to present programming in interviews with candidates.

This is extremely valuable airtime. Thirty-second spots on Hannity’s show ran more than $76,000 at the higher “issue rate” in the third quarter, according to the Columbus, Ohio-based firm Medium Buying. Candidate rates are lower, often substantially, particularly when you buy more time. If we assume that each 30 seconds costs as little as $50,000 — well beneath what Medium Buying has been cited for candidate spots in the past — the airtime provided by Hannity would have run the candidates north of $2.4 million.

Instead, it’s not costing them anything. In fact, it’s probably a net positive, by design: During the interview, they often pointedly include directions for viewers to visit their websites and contribute.

Again, the 97 minutes is only the interview. It doesn’t include the introductions to each segment, which often included negative news stories about their opponents or snippets of recent debates (as he did with Michigan GOP gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon and Arizona Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters). Before that interview with Oz on Oct. 5, he showed an ad from Oz’s campaign, then welcomed the candidate himself on “for reaction.”

Oz reacted positively to the ad, as you might assume.

This is also only one show and one means of boosting candidates. The watchdog group Media Matters catalogued the extent of Fox News’s coverage of Senate races across prime time from early September to early October. Fox mentioned Republican Senate candidates about twice as often as MSNBC — and mentioned Democrats nearly four times as many times as its rival. Data provided by Media Matters to The Washington Post indicates that Republican Senate candidates made 32 combined appearances on Fox’s prime-time programs from Sept. 6 to Oct. 18.

On Monday, Hannity entered his last commercial break with a tease: he had a big announcement worth sticking around for. When the show returned, he broke the news: his guest on Wednesday would be Pennsylvania Senate candidate Mehmet Oz, who would be the star of an hour-long “town hall” discussion.

It will no doubt prove to be lucrative.