Debate lockout compounds third-party efforts: limits on TV access limits campaign effectiveness.

Third-party candidates are not getting the television coverage they had hoped for, because they are excluded from debates and other free air time and cannot afford to buy commercials on network television. Reform Party candidate Ross Perot claims he was refused time when he tried to buy it from the networks. Only the cable channel C-Span is offering coverage to candidates from the Green Party, Natural Law Party, Reform Party and others.

Third-party candidates - even the Reform Party's well-known and well-financed H. Ross Perot - are running into roadblocks gaining the TV exposur