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ABC Won’t Deal with Agencies Insisting on Live Only

ABC is the first network to claim unequivocally that it will not write business in the upcoming upfront season with media agencies that refuse to take Nielsen’s new ratings into account, Mediaweek writes. In December Nielsen began issuing new sets of TV ratings, including live plus same day and live plus 7 days, both of which take into account non-live digital video recorder viewing.

Buyers such as Magna Global and Carat have said that live ratings only should be the basis for ad-pricing negotiations, because it is impossible to tell how many DVR viewers are fast forwarding through the commercials.

But ABC sales president Mike Shaw - whose sales team brought in $2.1 billion in prime-time ad sales during last year’s upfront, a 30 percent boost over the previous year - said that the view of those agencies is unreasonable, unfair, and unjust.

Shaw points out that ABC created a special episode of Grey’s Anatomy to air after the Super Bowl on Sunday. He is quoted in the article as saying, “Are the advertisers saying that those people who may have watched seven hours of Super Bowl coverage, who then may have decided to record Grey’s Anatomy and watch the show the next night, don�t matter, and shouldn’t be counted as viewers?”

Strengthening his argument are the live-plus-7-day ratings for that particular episode. While Grey’s Anatomy posted an 8.5 live rating in the 18-49 demo, it posted an 8.7 live-plus-7-day rating, the highest rated prime-time show to receive that large a boost from time-shifted viewing, the aritcle reports. However, in some cases and at least at first, the live-plus data streams showed some unusual and unexpected results, causing further distrust among media buyers about the validity of the data.