Early Reports Say Upfront Strong; Turner Nets to Crash Big Boys’ Party

The economic slowdown and repercussions from the writers strike may not have a deleterious affect on the upfronts. Preliminary reports say the upfront season is likely to be stronger than last year.

At least, that’s what the networks are optimistically saying. Mike Shaw, president of sales and marketing at ABC, says marketers are already approaching the network to talk about early deals, the Wall Street Journal reports.

One reason for a potentially strong upfront is the fact that some marketers who avoided the upfront last year in the hopes of purchasing inventory at a cheaper rate actually foundered in the scatter market, finding themselves forced to pay as much as 40 percent higher than the upfront rates. Some were out of luck completely, as inventory became so scarce as to be nonexistent.

Media buyers, who have a stake in keeping upfront hype from getting too high, argue that a stronger upfront doesn’t mean that advertisers will automatically spend more in 2008 than they did in 2007. It simply means that advertisers are committing their dollars earlier in the year.

Some cable networks are planning to jump into the upfront market earlier than in the past. Turner’s TNT, TBS and TruTV (formerly known as Court TV) are all moving their upfront presentations to the week of May 12, the same week as the presentations from the broadcast networks, in the hopes of stealing more dollars away from their broadcast brethren. “We’re not saying don’t buy broadcast, but we’re saying an over-reliance on broadcast is a problem in this marketplace,” says David Levy, president of Turner Broadcasting sales and Turner Sports.

ESPN was the first to move its upfront to the same week as the Big 4 broadcast networks last year. This year, it will also hold its presentations during the week of May 12, according to AdAge.

Advertisers such as Anheuser-Busch have been moving ad dollars from broadcast to cable as viewership on the broadcast networks erodes. The four weeks ended Feb. 24, for example, saw ratings down more than 15 percent from the same period a year earlier - and those four weeks included a Super Bowl telecast that drew record numbers of viewers.

A January report from Michael Nathanson, a senior analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., pointed out that basic cable’s collective share of prime time viewing surpassed that of broadcast in Q2 2006. In Q4 2007, cable’s share of prime time viewing was 58.7 percent, versus 41.3 percent for broadcast (adults 18-49).

If inventory on the broadcast networks remains scarce, the cable nets may well see even more advertiser dollars headed their way. Such scarcity causes ad rates to rise, which could push advertisers to less expensive cable.

Last year’s upfront reached $9.2 billion, up from about $9 billion the previous year.