In business, the term "channel conflict" is used to describe a situation wherein a manufacturer sells, markets, or distributes is products through competing channels of distribution. For example, if a company already uses retailers, distributors, dealers, or sales representatives and then decides to also sell the product direct to consumers via the internet, we'd call this channel conflict. It is not always a bad thing and not always to be avoided. The airlines sale of tickets through travel agents and over the internet is an example of channel conflict that persists without major problems.

The 2008 presidential race between John McCain and Barack Obama has given a new example of channel conflict. An deeply unpopular industry (oil) and its ultimate channel of distribution (local gas stations) are implicated. But the other channel, the one around which the conflict revolves, is of the mass communication variety. It's not the internet, but rather television. The Tampa Bay Business Journal explains (Hat Tip: National Review)

A plan to campaign at gas pumps in Tampa and Miami sputtered out Wednesday when a Michigan advertising company refused to take an advertising order. Gas Station TV, which provides video content on gas pumps around the country, decided against running an ad for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama Wednesday saying it’s decided to stay politically neutral. At the same time, however, Obama campaign staffers are telling media they believe the refusal had more to do with the content of the ads — which attacked oil companies for creating high gasoline prices — than for simply staying away from politics.

While the Obama campaign sees the refusal as an example of "the oil companies and their friends... standing with Sen. McCain, the candidate for president who is proposing to offer them a $4 billion tax cut", there is a simpler explanation, as Jim Geraghty of National Review explains:

I can understand Team Obama's frustration with the rejection, but it takes a lot of nerve — or perhaps arrogance — to ask a small businessman to run advertising that essentially says, "my suppliers are a bunch of greedy jerks."

There is actually a precedent for doing such a thing. Three years ago Steve Jobs publicly accused record company executives of "greediness" when they fail to pressure Apple to raise prices on iTunes. But the owners of corner gas stations have neither the clout of a Steve Jobs, the ability to play suppliers off against one another, nor an industry in financial peril. Nor, for that matter, do they have in candidate Obama, someone who understands that neither they nor Gas StationTV are friends of big oil. Rather they are channels with common and sometimes conflicting interests.