CBS Sees Signs of Improvement in Ad Market

CBS Corp. is the latest media company to say signs of improvement have appeared in the ad market.

CBS Corp. CFO Fred Reynolds said, during the Merrill Lynch Global Telecommunications, Media and Technology Conference, that the ad market is no longer declining and showed signs of stabilization in mid-February, writes The Hollywood Reporter.

CBS’s pricing in the scatter market is up slightly - by mid-single digits - over last year’s upfront, said Reynolds.

Reynolds also confirmed that the upfront has gotten off to a slow start, with advertisers still in the process of cementing their budgets. Upfront deals will likely be done in early to mid-July. General Motors’ bankruptcy filing is said to be putting pressure on sellers in the upfront. Steve Lanzano, COO of MPG, says buyers are likely planning to use GM’s bankruptcy filing to negotiate better prices for their clients.

Media executives on earnings calls have been saying that the TV ad market is not getting any worse, Miller Tabak analyst David Joyce said in early May.

News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch said, on reporting the company’s fiscal third-quarter profit, that the “worst is over,” while Walt Disney Co. CFO Tom Staggs told analysts that the rate of decline in the advertising market is “stabilizing.”  Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman said the company is seeing “good stable pricing in the market,” and, though volume has been soft, it’s starting to come back in.

Still, the media industry is looking at a long recovery, not a quick “spring-back,” as some had hoped, says Dean DeBiase, CEO of TNS Media.