Ad Buyers on NBC: Wait 'Til Next Year; Exec Shift Should Not Affect This Upfront.(News)(National Broadcasting Company Inc. NBC Entertainment's Ben Silverman)

TelevisionWeek, June, 2007 by Lafayette, Jon

Byline: Jon Lafayette NBC's new creative chief, Ben Silverman, inherits a fall lineup that television advertising buyers say won't turn the network around overnight. The real test for Mr. Silverman, they say, will come next fall. The fourth-rated network, which lost viewers each of the three years that NBC Entertainment President Kevin Reilly ran the shop, in 2006 posted flat upfront sales commitments.

That lackluster performance followed an $800 million decline in commitments the year before. "At the end of the day, NBC had to do something,'' said Jason Maltby, president and co-executive director of national broadcast at MindShare North America. "They had to shake the tree somehow. I don't think their vision was to still be in fourth place.'' Enter...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.