Upfront Season
Posted by Chad on May 31, 2007
We are in the final weeks of what could be called the 9th Upfront Season. How broken is this system,? Let’s Review:
For the newbies out there Upfront is not held to one specific conference or power meeting of all media brokers. Rather, it is a time of year that has evolved with and coincides with AC Nielsen’s Sweeps Month (this is the same reason that we all have season finales and sensational local news twice a year – to help inflate numbers and viewers temporarily so Networks can sell ad space for top dollar). The numbers that AC Nielsen generates and reports will largely determine how advertising dollars get spent, currently $9 billion in just prime time tv. Some organized events that try to take advantage of the time of year where so many dollars are being exchanged are becoming more and more evident (Television Week).
Networks take advantage of the season and some of the events to show off stars and woo buyers (a bit of gossip – The cast of the The Office was being trumpeted around to touting their success when one of the stars fell down a set of marble stairs and broke some of the vertebrae in her back – we get the feeling that NBC was trying to hard to show off it’s couple of hits).
Other big talk this year is time-shifting, a fancy way of referring to DVR’s and recording shows to watch later. We have touched on the flaws of current time shifted viewer rating in one of our past postings, more to come so not to worry. Networks are saying we can guarantee fresh content to viewers in at least 3 days. Never mind the the fact that ABC has their show “Lost” online so viewers can watch past episodes, or the fact that somebody besides TiVO might make a DVR. We don’t have nay number just yet to refute the 3 day claim but, RawData just had a big break on some of our software development and we are much closer to providing accurate data.
At RawData we are hyper consumers of media and are excited to see where media buyers spend their dollars because those dollars dictate what will be broadcast in the coming season. Our vote, buy “Lost” and “The Office” – Don’t buy into “Dancing with the Stars” (contrary to what AC Nielsen is reporting nobody is watching).
Here is a link to a preliminary forecast of what is being canceled, what is going another season, and what is new for the individual networks.
