The New York Times has a fascinating article on how Bush campaign officials are using conservative-minded local radio shows in politically important states to sell the Republican message ahead of the 2004 election.

It doesn't matter that some of the stations have tiny audiences because, as one academic tells the paper, "you can win a national election 50,000 listeners at a time."

Such a carefully-targetted media strategy wouldn't work in the same way here in the UK in because talk radio doesn't feature in the media landscape in the same way as it does in the US. But there's still a network of local radio stations across the country with limited resources and hours of air time to fill -- not to mention hundreds of local daily and weekly newspapers.

Political strategists are waking up to the fact that it's not just the national media that wins hearts and minds during election campaigns.