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Cable Able To Cash In

It was fast and frenzied, but by Friday advertisers had committed to spending at least $9 billion for the 2003-'04 broadcast prime-time season - with estimates ranging from $9.2 billion on the low end to $9.8 billion by those who included prime-time sports and Academy Awards ads sold by ABC.

Broadcast network deals last week were reportedly inked at rates up to 25% higher than last year. The week's tally far outstripped anyone's expectations going into the upfront, even surprising self-proclaimed bull and veteran media-watcher Jack Myers, who headlined his upfront report on Friday: "Wow!!!"

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Marketers' urgency to lock in fourth quarter and 2004 schedules also gave an unexpected boost to cable, with concurrent deals being written for top-tier cable networks last week, instead of after broadcast and syndication deals were locked in.

Ad sales chiefs at USA, Turner and Discovery confirmed they had inked deals by Friday - as did Lifetime, which was being watched closely given its recent ratings slide.

Fox Cable, including FX, saw double-digit increases for the deals it struck last week, with its cable properties pacing 50% to 60% over last year's upfront.

MTV struck and continued to work on deals last week, according to spokesperson Jeanine Smart. "We are closing select deals with major agencies," she said on Friday. "We are seeing substantial growth across all of our properties, and our CPMs are in double digits."

The action now moves to the rest of cable this week, with ongoing discussions expected to turn into contracts at Court TV, E! Networks, Hallmark Channel, Game Show Network and cable networks owned by Scripps, Rainbow and Viacom, according to ad sales executives at those networks. A&E, whose executives were not available for comment on Friday, will be closely watched this week, with no deals from last week to build momentum for this week's cable-oriented phase of the upfront.

Although cable network ad sales is a year-round business, the broadcast upfront was particularly favorable for USA, Turner and Discovery, which all inked more than half of their deals by press time and expect to continue closing deals this week.

Lifetime EVP of ad sales Lynn Picard - who was pitching a second night of original programming on weekends and product placement opportunities on new shows such as Merge - was playing the upfront close to her vest on Friday. She declined to give percentages, although confirmed she wrote business last week and expected to start the holiday weekend with a substantial amount of her upfront deals done.

"We are writing business and moving along at a fast pace," Picard said on Friday. "We are right on strategy with what we wanted to accomplish, so I'm very pleased. The money's definitely there, and the top tier of cable networks is really active. I think that's how the future is, with tiers. Advertisers and agencies are recognizing there is a lot of value in some of the top-tier programming, such as our original stuff and Turner's and USA's originals and big theatricals, so it probably makes sense that they wanted to secure that kind of programming. I don't know if they're positioning it back to the clients that it's like broadcast, but that could very well be."

If agencies are positioning top-tier cable nets as comparable value to broadcast in terms of efficiency and reach, that's in no small part due to Turner's Millennium III report that made the pre-upfront rounds at the agencies. "With the agencies looking at cable concurrently with the broadcast upfront, it suggests to me that the message we were going out with for the last month and a half concerning Millennium III and the substitutability between us and broadcast really paid off," said David Levy, president of Turner Entertainment Sales and Marketing.

Last week's early big-ticket cable deals are "going to set the market, when it's all said and done," he added. With more than half of available time on TNT and TBS sold by Friday, Levy added that major categories - including pharmaceutical, automotive, movies, home entertainment and particularly DVDs - were up by at least 10%, with all 2002 sponsorships now renewed, along with special promotions.

"Volume is up across multiple categories, at least 10% and in many cases a lot more," he said. "I thought there might be one or two, but there have been multiple categories that have increases, which makes sense with a $9 billion-plus upfront."

USA was on track to sell more than two-thirds of its upfront inventory by the weekend. "We've created more value for this upfront with hosted nights on Thursdays, which we've never done before on USA, and a hosted Saturday afternoon movie," said Jeff Lucas, president of ad sales at Universal Television Group. "We do deals that include cross-platform product placement in our theme parks. At Universal, we produce many of the TV shows that air on the networks, and we work with the producers of those shows."

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Cable Able To Cash In

Cable World, May 26, 2003

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