Cable ads down 23% in October

Cable World, Jan 7, 2002 by Joe Mandese

If the cable TV industry's own, self-reported estimates are any indication, cable TV advertising sales essentially crashed in October.

The estimates, compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers for the Broadcast Cable Financial Management Association, show cable TV ad sales plummeting by nearly 23% from October 2000 to $652.8 million.

If accurate, that's a loss of more than $190 million in sales this October versus last.

Although the BCFM has a reputation for accuracy and objectivity, the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau--as well as several networks that provide data to the BCFM--questioned the veracity of these findings.

"There is something wrong with their numbers," said Joe Ostrow, president of the CAB, who says the ad bureau has stopped working with the BCFM data until the mess can be sorted out. He said the CAB expects to begin working with the data again in about "six to eight months."

One reason for that timing, he said, is that the BCFM has been rolling in new networks during 2001, which affects comparisons to the same periods in 2000. In January 2001, the BCFM added four networks to the survey, and in April 2001 it added two, bringing the total number of networks measured to 30.

While that surely influences the year-to-year trending of the data, in theory it should have boosted 2001 estimates by including millions of dollars in ad sales from networks such as TNN, CMT, History Channel, Fox News Channel, FX and Fox Sports Network, none of which was measured in 2000.

In fact, data compiled by Nielsen Monitor-Plus for Media Buyer's Daily, a newsletter published by Media Central, which owns Cable World, comparing the same cable networks in 2000 and 2001, showed a 9.3% drop in total ad spending in October 2001.

While most publicly held cable network companies have not yet reported October ad revenue estimates, one that has--E.W. Scripps--said ad revenues for the Scripps Networks (Food Network, Home & Garden Television and DYI) fell 17.8% in October. That's a precipitous drop for a cable network group that many believed-- because of its subscriber growth and the strength of its endemic ad base--had been better positioned during this economic downturn than many bigger networks.

But if the Scripps Networks are any barometer, the cable TV ad business should rebound in November. Scripps last week reported that ad sales for its cable networks had risen 5.8% during the month.