A new article in Adweek says this year's mid-term elections rewrote the record book for political advertising, with local broadcasters all across the country scoring huge windfalls.

You might recall our blog entry earlier this week where we pointed out how the National Association of Broadcasters had filed a report with the FCC painting a dire financial picture of the nation's small and medium-sized television stations. How did they do it? NAB only looked at revenues and profits in odd-numbered years, ignoring those huge profits and revenues television stations collect in even-numbered years from political advertising and the Olympics.

The Adweek article shows just how preposterous the NAB report was, especially in light that the broadcaster association used it to argue the FCC needs to further relax its media ownership rules.

The article says "political spending on broadcast television smashed all forecasts and records to total more than $2.1 billion this year, an increase of $1 billion over the last midterm election in 2002." Those figures cames from Evan Tracey of TNS Media Intelligence, a company that track political advertising.

There was so much money being thrown at broadcasters for polical advertising the past few months that they were able to raise their ad rates with relative impunity, according to the article.

"With so much spending, inventory tightened in many markets, sending rate cards out the window in markets such as Ohio, Maryland and California," said the article.