Comments on: Upfront Predictions from Advertising Age

By: Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman — Mon, 12 May 2008 23:51:04 +0000

Great point, Alfie.

By: Alfie

Alfie — Mon, 12 May 2008 23:40:22 +0000

FOX only has 15 hours of primetime to sell, far less than the 22 hours for ABC, NBC, and CBS. Therefore, in terms of total they would be less, but they will probably have the highest CPM.

By: Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:51:04 +0000

Great point, Alfie.

By: Alfie

Alfie — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:40:22 +0000

FOX only has 15 hours of primetime to sell, far less than the 22 hours for ABC, NBC, and CBS. Therefore, in terms of total they would be less, but they will probably have the highest CPM.

By: Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman — Mon, 12 May 2008 03:10:00 +0000

From what I’ve read the Super Bowl and Olympic buys are separate from the upfront. Not sure about SNF.

By: dave

dave — Mon, 12 May 2008 03:05:00 +0000

do they sell ads for prime time sports at the upfronts? if not that could explain why nbc’s numbers are so low. (Sunday night football, super bowl, Olympics)

By: dave

dave — Mon, 12 May 2008 03:03:00 +0000

they just accidentally reprinted nbc’s numbers for cw. statlc numbers seem correct.
nbc is expected to make less money than fox in upfront prime time ad sales programming 2/3 the amount of content.
In a year where the super bowl and Olympics should make their lineup more desirable.
pathetic.

By: Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman — Mon, 12 May 2008 03:03:00 +0000

In short, no.

You could probably pay a high-priced consultant a lot of money to get you in the right ballpark. But you can’t really derive it from public info because all the networks are part of big corporate conglomerates and are not under any obligation to break out the television networks’ reporting separately. While we can read things like NBC Universal is one of GE’s better operating groups, how NBC’s primetime revenue plays into that isn’t easy to intuit.

By: nope

nope — Mon, 12 May 2008 02:57:01 +0000

is there a way to calculate the profit each network makes? im guessing this is just advertising sold during upfronts, but it doesnt factor in other things.

is that kind of information safe guarded and only released when the networks want it to be?

By: Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman — Mon, 12 May 2008 02:14:00 +0000

Statlc, Occam’s Razor suggests your explanation is the best one

By: Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman — Mon, 12 May 2008 02:10:00 +0000

The only way it would make any sense to me is if FOX sold only 30% of its non-Super Bowl programming last year and CW sold 100% of its inventory for the next 5 years. But I was under the impression FOX had sold around 75% of its primetime inventory (excluding Super Bowl) via the upfront last year, and that’s either way, way off, Ad Age is, OR CW sprinkles magic pixie dust on the buyers

By: Statlc

Statlc — Mon, 12 May 2008 02:10:00 +0000

My guess is that they got it wrong in the .pdf file, because in the article it says “The CW’s total is expected to decline 15% to $560 million”. That’s still more than I thought, though.

By: Daniel C.

Daniel C. — Mon, 12 May 2008 02:01:51 +0000

That CW figure is shocking to me in comparison to the other nets. Who exactly are the advertisers buying with them that would be worth so much?

I figured that FOX was low due to the fewer programming hours each week, but the CW figure makes me doubt that too.