But when the weeklong "upfront" bargaining begins today, network chiefs will be ready for battle. Faced with radical changes in the way people watch television, NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox hope to introduce new ways of measuring - and getting paid for - the growing number of viewers who download, stream or replay TV shows. That goal sets the stage for one of the most potentially confusing and divisive upfront weeks in TV history.
"Those people will be counted, and we will be paid for them," says CBS President and Chief Executive Officer Leslie Moonves, sounding the networks' call to arms. "For the first time, I am confident we will get paid for DVR digital video recorders viewing in this year's upfront - turning a current problem into a big and ongoing asset." "Each network could find itself facing the chaos of negotiating sales on an agency-by-agency and show-by-show basis this week.
And that will probably mean less money than ever for the networks at these upfronts," says Abe Novick, an advertising executive who specializes in new media at Channel Communications in Towson. "There is no longer a single measurement tool that everyone will accept when it comes to network TV viewing." Predicting diminished earnings for network TV has become a safe venture in recent years.
At the 2004 upfronts, advertisers bought $9.5 billion worth of commercial airtime. The next year, the tally dropped to $9.
2 billion. Last year, the networks made $8.9 billion in ad revenue.
Analysts predict that this year, the networks' total earnings won't exceed $8.5 billion. That would represent a loss of $1 billion in just three years.
That decline follows a parallel slide in TV viewership that began more than a decade ago. According to the most recent data from Nielsen Media Research, ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox collectively have lost 2.5 million viewers since last year at this time.
TV sales executives, however, plan to counter with figures they say represent the new reality of television viewership. They'll bolster their argument with research gathered by fledgling operations such as Buzzmeter, Doubleclick, Atlas and Omniture. These new firms track TV programs and ads that are downloaded, streamed, recorded and chatted about online.
These days, the networks say, there are three kinds of TV viewers: those who watch the show when it airs, those who download or stream the show, and those who record and replay the show on their DVRs. "The last two audiences are growing and have not been adequately counted," says Jason Wertlieb, a veteran of a half-dozen upfronts who now serves as president and general manger of NBC affiliate WBAL-TV (Channel 11) in Baltimore. "That's a huge issue for the TV industry and a major point of contention for the upfronts.
" The show that most clearly illustrates the crux of the debate may be NBC's freshman hit Heroes, a serialized drama about ordinary people with extraordinary abilities who try to save the world. NBC has aggressively marketed the epic saga to young tech-savvy viewers, making it available at a Web site full of digital content that includes an online companion novel.
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