If you're one of the thousands of voters angry over the Democrats' cave on domestic spying and telecom amnesty, a new online grassroots movement is now making it easy to buy a local ad on MSNBC, CNN and several other networks, for less money than you'd think.

A group of Barack Obama supporters and startup SaysMe.tv have created a new television ad to keep both the public and lawmakers' attention focused on the issue of warrantless wiretapping and the telecoms' immunity from lawsuits in the United States.

Credit: GetFISARightThe grassroots group Get FISA Right has created a 30-second spot critical of the surveillance bill passed by Congress earlier this month. It's placed the spot with a Los Angeles startup that buys ad time in bulk from cable providers and resells off slivers to individuals willing to pay for airtime in markets around the country.

The mashup means anyone who supports the repeal of the controversial law can pay online with a credit card to run the advertisement in any of eight cable TV markets around the country. By August 15, 22 markets will be available. The cost of spots varies from six dollars for placement on CNBC between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. in Cleveland, for example, to $1,856 to run on CNN in New York City between 6 p.m. and midnight.

The wiretap protest movement started life as a group on Barack

Obama's social networking site My.BarackObama.com. The group was dedicated to deterring Obama from voting for a measure that legalized President

Bush's warrantless wiretapping program and granted retroactive legal immunity to the phone companies that cooperated with the spying when it was illegal. Membership swelled to more than 24,000 ahead of the July vote, but it still failed to deter Obama from supporting the unprecedented expansion of U.S. domestic spying powers.

Determined to keep the debate alive into the next Congress, GetFisaRight is using SaysMe.TV to bring their message to television, 30-seconds at a time.

It's a first for online activists: A netroots invasion of a medium traditionally dominated by deeper pockets like special interest political groups, official political campaigns and corporations. Spots have already been purchased in Charlotte, North Carolina, Dallas and Los Angeles.

SaysMe.tv enables individuals to choose where and when they want to advertise their causes and opinions on cable television networks using an embeddable online application.

Screenshot: Saysme.tvSupporters can choose which markets and what time they want the ad to run. SaysMe.TV then submits the ad to the cable company, which takes up to two weeks to approve, making sure that it conforms to the cable network's standards, FCC regulations and federal electioneering law. SaysMe.TV then sends the purchaser of the ad an e-mail 24 hours before the ad runs to tell them exactly what time the spot will appear.

"The value of these ads is that they expose this issue to people who haven't otherwise heard about it," says Jon Pincus, the chief organizer of the effort. "In the aggregate, this effort as a whole has value."

Pincus teamed up with SaysMe.TV and other activists on the group's Wikito create the 30-second ad.

The point, he says, is to build up enough political clout to change the debate in races where candidates are running with significant online support. He also hopes to influence Congress and the next administration to revisit the issue of amnesty and domestic spying.

"We care about this issue, we're not going away, we expect things to change, and we expect Congress and the administration to get FISA

right," Pincus says.

The group had also encouraged community activists to attend the "listening sessions" organized by the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee this month. The sessions were designed to gather grassroots feedback to build the party platform that will be voted on during the convention in August – though it seems unlikely that the Democratic party will add opposition to a bill it already passed as a plank in its platform.

Now Pincus and other group members are figuring out how to most effectively use the new TV tool.

Pincus says he envisions running anti-amnesty ads in his hometown of Seattle, where Democratic challenger and netroots favorite Darcy Burner is running for Congress. Burner was against the telecom immunity legislation, and Pincus says that running some ads might help to publicize that fact and turn out supporters for her.

Lisa Eisenpresser, SaysMe.TV's CEO, calls her service a "vending machine" for cable TV slots. And unlike direct political contributions, there's no spending limit for TV ads – though she says that the company reports customers' payment information to the Federal Election Commission whenever an ad promotes a particular candidate.

SaysMe.TV and Spotrunner, a similar service, make the most sense for issue groups such as Pincus' FISA group, rather than for political candidates, says Phil de Vellis, a senior associate and vice president for the Democratic political advertising firm Murphy Putnam Media. That's because political candidates still want to generally rely on the expertise of professionals with demographic and voting data to wring the most bang out of their advertising bucks.

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