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From the NYT: THE broadcast networks and Madison Avenue may want to adopt “Honky Cat” as the official theme for the 2008-9 television season.
Why? The term upfront refers to the springtime previews offered by the networks of the prime-time programs they intend to broadcast in the fall. It also describes how the advertisers and their agencies decide to buy billions of dollars of commercial time ahead of the fall season.
Change is in the air because of the mess the 100-day writers’ strike made of the 2007-8 TV season, which ends this month. The strike scrambled the networks’ schedules, chased away millions of viewers and impeded the ability of advertisers to reach the audiences they wanted.
“The networks, and advertisers, realized that an upfront reflective of a business model born when there were three networks is unsustainable,” said John Rash, senior vice president and director for media negotiations at Campbell Mithun, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies. After the strike was settled in February, the broadcasters resolved to rethink how the coming upfront week would proceed. Some changes are more substantive. For example, the networks are ordering far fewer pilots, test episodes of new series that are expensive to produce. The senior executives at media agencies who help marketers determine which shows to buy commercials in — and which to avoid — welcome the changes. One method of doing that would be, as the networks intend, to include in their presentations alternatives to TV like broadband video and video on demand.
Gail Ettinger, executive vice president and director for national broadcast at KSL Media, said: “The networks are selling in a 360-degree fashion because that’s the way people live these days. The agency executives are also enthusiastic about the shift to the 52-week season, which was pioneered by Fox Broadcasting, part of the News Corporation, when it scheduled new series for summertime like “So You Think You Can Dance.”
“The idea of dropping in new shows throughout the year is a smart move,” said Kris Magel, senior vice president and director for national broadcast at Initiative, part of Interpublic, because “advertisers need original programming from June through August, not low-rated repeats.”
After the upfront week presentations conclude on Thursday, the negotiations between the networks and agencies begin in earnest. (There are separate negotiations for cable networks and syndicated shows, as well as for broadcast programs outside prime time like newscasts.)
Jessica Reif Cohen, an analyst at Merrill Lynch, predicted last week that the broadcast upfront market for 2008-9 would decline by 2 percent to 14 percent.
By contrast, Mr. DeWitt of DeWitt Media forecast “a stampede to put as much money into the upfront as possible” because rates for commercials bought recently were far higher than what the networks charged during the upfront market last spring.
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