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Ad Inventory Available in ABC’s Desperate Housewives, Et Al

ABC’s strategy of increasing ad prices for advertisers by only mid-single digits during the upfront, apparently in expectation of a pullback by advertisers in broadcast TV spending, has apparently worked out, leaving the network with a strong mix of ad inventory available for the scatter market, reports AdAge. Media buyers had expected higher price hikes from ABC, given the network’s hit shows such as Desperate Housewives, but Robert Iger, Walt Disney Co.‘s CEO-elect, said the network “read the marketplace very carefully and, I think, in the end accurately.”

 

While ABC sold about 80 percent of their schedule, their mix of inventory in scatter is “actually stronger than it was last year,” Iger went on. “So the inventory that they have left to sell in programs like Desperate Housewives and Lost and Grey’s Anatomy is proportionately greater than the inventory that they have in some of the new programs.â€?

ABC’s upfront take comes to $2.1 billion in advertiser commitments, up from $1.6 billion last year - a time when the network held fourth place behind CBS, Fox, and NBC.