THIS week is the most important week of the year for network television – but it has nothing to do with you.
True, ordinary viewers do mean something to the networks, but only if your home has a Nielsen box, and there are only 5,000 homes with those out of 100 million TV households nationwide.
Of course, the networks expend a great deal of effort all season long trying to woo the people who live in those Nielsen households (and, by extension, all viewers).
But this week, as they unveil their fall lineups, the networks will be playing to a much narrower, but more important audience – the advertising executives who control the $8 billion dollars that will be spent on commercial time for the upcoming 2000-2001 season, which starts in October.
And they’ll be plunking down most of that money in just 10 days or so, over this week and next, commencing with this week’s announcements.
That’s a lot of scratch for new shows that the public hasn’t even seen yet.
In fact, at $8 billion (to be spread over seven networks – ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, UPN, WB and Pax), the networks would break all previous sales records for so-called “upfront” advertising (i.e., commercial time purchased in advance of the new season), even though network TV’s share of overall viewing is flat or slightly down from a year ago.
The network dog-and-pony shows (closed to the public, naturally) will have the advertising executives traipsing all over town – from various theaters to hotel ballrooms – today through Thursday.
NBC kicks off the week this afternoon at 4 at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center. Tomorrow, it’s the WB at the Sheraton New York on Seventh Avenue, beginning at 9 a.m., followed by ABC at Radio City Music Hall at 4 p.m. On Wednesday, Pax unveils its fall plans at City Center on 56th Street, beginning at 9 a.m., while CBS announces its schedule at Carnegie Hall, starting at 3 p.m. And on Thursday, UPN will fill the Theater at Madison Square Garden at 11 a.m. and Fox will present its new shows at the Beacon Theater on the Upper West Side at 4 p.m.
The annual kickoff of the upfront sales season has long been this way – warm May days filled with star-studded presentations followed by fancy, tented receptions, and then, intense haggling resulting in the rapid-fire expenditure of billions of dollars.
The incredible irony behind all that effort is this: Most of the shows the networks will be promoting this week, and for which the advertisers will be paying billions for commercial time, are almost certainly headed for cancellation before the conclusion of next season.
