We all know that this is going to be a race to dominate the air waves.

What bothers me is that these airwaves are not owned by progressive-friendly organizations.  Canwest, CTV and other smaller stations (that are owned by Canwest and CTV) regularly show a considerable level of disdain towards progressive ideals and have probably already shut out the opposition.

With that in mind, I’d be willing to wager that the Conservatives had their air-time booked months ago, leaving little but the few ads in between Quest Personals and a 30-minute sales pitch for ‘the Bullet’.

More importantly, I’d also go so far as to suggest that not only are we going to see Steve’s mug interrupting "American Gladiators" and "TMZ", we’ll also be pounded by a wave of ‘feel good’ ‘new government ads’ that are thinly veiled Conservative ads.

A personal favourite for the Conservatives will likely be Department of Defense recruitment ads.

Watch for it.  Key words that they’ll probably embed with Public Service Ads will be ‘responsibility’, ‘strength’, ‘security’, ‘on guard for Canada’ and a whole bunch of other framing that will mirror Stephen Harper’s press releases.  All of the color tones will be Conservative blue, especially now that they’ve vetted any show of red, green or orange (or other colour for that matter) from any Government of Canada advertisements.

As a result of this shut-out, the real opportunity will be the Internet.  Candidates that have some sense will make the best of good-old viral campaigns and competitions.  They’ll inspire Canadians like me as they launch YouTube video and Rabble podcast describing their platforms in as much detail as you want, without the media sound bites.  The smart candidates and leaders will create a new level of dialogue that will encourage Canadians to talk about what’s important to them.

And they’ll be able to save enormous gobs of money to do this because they won’t be wasting it on TV, indirectly funding those who believe ‘progressive’ is a bad word in Canada.

But they should get on it soon … the clock is definitely ticking.