The Obama Channel

Those of you out there with Dish network can tune in to channel 73 for, you guessed it, the Obama channel. Dish network approached both campaigns about buying their own channels and Obama jumped at the opportunity. What is on the channel? A loop of various position speeches, excerpts from Obama's DNC speech and other Obama-centric video. You can see a sample of the programming below. The most interesting thing to me actually came from a quote on the Agency Spy blog:

[Dish Network]...offered Obama and McCain the same opportunity, and the Obama camp was the only one to bite. Apparently, they think paying for what they can get for free on YouTube is a good idea. Hmm.

Look at that last line again. It basically says that having your own channel on a major satellite provider is the same as using YouTube (ok, not just using YouTube, but using YouTube wisely.) To me that's not so much a knock to Obama's strategy as it is a resounding endorsement of YouTube. While financial details weren't disclosed on the Obama channel deal, it's safe to say that it's probably valued at several million dollars. And you too can get that same sort of million dollar exposure by posting for free on YouTube. If you ever needed an extra push to dive into the world of web video marketing, there it is. Now every small business in America can get big budget exposure on a shoe string budget. Of course you'll need a knowledgeable partner for the production and social media push (i.e. trying to go viral), but I'm sure you know where to find a company like that, don't you?