Multiplatform Programmers Set to Soar
With this year’s upfront TV market negotiations rapidly approaching, leading cable nets are widely expected to outpace broadcasters. Growth for the top tier programmers isn’t likely to be explosive. Indeed, buyers suggest that the winners will see just upticks of just a few percentage points in cost per thousand (CPM in ad parlance). But that’s expected to beat the broadcasters as falling audience numbers are hardly wowing the advertisers.
Of course, cable’s prices remain significantly below those garnered by broadcasters. In an upfront presentation for Discovery, ad sales president Joseph Abruzzese noted that a marketer could make a prime time buy on four of his networks for the same amount it would spend on a single broadcast net.
Still, cable programmers with top-rated original offerings are on a definite roll as demonstrated by the $1 billion in profits that NBC Universal’s USA and SciFi nets contributed to its parent’s bottom line last year. Of course not all that was from advertising. (Cable’s two-tier revenue structure via advertising and cable system sub fees continues to be a major benefit.)•
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