CBS' "Two and a Half Men" continues to deliver high ratings.
BOTTOM LINE: Overall, the media may be taking a beating in 2008, but the New York Times reports that advertising rates on the broadcast networks remained strong despite fewer viewers. 12-30-2008
Advertising TV Retains Marketing Dollars in Hard Times By JOHN CONSOLI While newspapers, magazines, radio and local television are all losing advertisers in the recessionary economy, the broadcast networks continue to be an anomaly, with advertisers putting their marketing dollars into national television at levels reminiscent of prosperous economic times. �The shoe hasn�t dropped yet,� said Kris Magel, senior vice president and director for national broadcast at Initiative, a media buying agency. The troubled economy �hasn�t hit national television yet,� he said. It�s not because the four major broadcast networks are delivering more prime-time viewers to advertisers than they did last season; they are not. Cumulatively, they are down 10 percent in actual live viewers, with ABC, NBC and Fox all drawing around a million viewers less each night than they did last season. CBS is the one network that has improved from last season; the network is up 1 percent in viewership. Among the 18-to-49-year-old audience sought by advertisers, there are also declines. Both ABC and Fox are down 14 percent, while NBC is down 9 percent and CBS is down 3 percent. So why are advertisers still putting their money into broadcast television? Network sales presidents and executives at various media agencies, who do the ad buying for the major advertisers, said that despite the continued fragmentation of national television viewing, the power of the broadcast networks to reach mass audiences on a nightly basis continued to give them an edge over other media. �When the economy goes into a recession, marketers are looking at ad platforms that generate the most efficiency, and that is national television,� said Rino Scanzoni, chief investment officer for the media agency conglomerate Group M, where he oversees broadcast TV ad spending of close to $3 billion for media agencies Mediaedge:cia, Mindshare and MediaCom. �When ad budgets are strapped, advertisers turn to the tried and true, and national TV has proven that it works in helping them move product in good and bad economic times.� Mr. Magel of Initiative said, �Broadcast television may be losing ratings, but there is no other medium that has been able to supplant it in a big enough way to negatively impact it at this point.� Link to rest of article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/30/business/media/30adco.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1230673856-+FNJyDiX3E+wa5yh3uadCg
Copyright 2008 Bottom Line Communications. BLC is a Web News Site that analyzes media and marketing issues. Please give credit or link to www.bottomlinecom.com when using any materials. Click on the FEEDBACK tab to send any media tips/comments/thoughts/feedback. We honor off-the-record requests and will correct/clarify any information found not to be 100% accurate.
