Advertisers keep yanking dollars out of what was once Madison Avenue’s most treasured media vehicle: primetime TV.
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Ad commitments for the next cycle of primetime broadcast TV fell 3.5% in this year’s “upfront” market, to $9.34 billion, according to Media Dynamics Inc., while commitments for primetime on cable tumbled 4.8%, to $9.065 billion. The diminishing dollars spotlight how the media industry is changing as more people gravitate to streaming video and other means of accessing their favorite programs, movies, news and sports events.
Meanwhile, ad commitments to streaming video hubs rose a noticeable 35.3%, hiking to $11.1 billion from $8.2 billion in the previous market. The amount committed to streaming video for the next TV season is greater than that devoted to primetime broadcast or primetime cable — a first for the industry.
Media Dynamics Inc. is an advertising consultancy that tracks the TV industry’s annual “upfront,” when U.S. TV networks try to sell the bulk of their commercial inventory for their next programming cycle.
All of the gains could be “attributed to streaming,” according to a Media Dynamics analysis released Wednesday, with linear TV’s downturn ultimately limited “due mainly to gains scored by its sports attractions.”
In other words, things could have been even worse.
In 2024, advertisers pulled 3.7% of the dollars they committed to primetime TV overall out of the medium. Total dollars earmarked for the platform fell to nearly $18.41 billion, compared with nearly $19.1 billion in 2023. In last year’s upfront market, advertisers committed $9.575 billion to primetime broadcast TV and $9.52 billion to primetime cable, according to Media Dynamics — marking drops of 3% and 7%, respectively .
Despite traditional TV’s eroding value, advertisers still put more money into the broader video business — linear and streaming — than they did in the previous year. Overall ad commitments to streaming and TV rose 8.1%, to nearly $29.51 billion, compared to nearly $27.3 billion in 2023.
The money being pulled out of TV and cable offers some ballast for decisions by two of the biggest TV companies — Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global — to write down the value of their portfolios of cable networks in the second quarter. Warner said it took a charge of $9.1 billion to write down the value of its TV portfolio, which includes TNT, TBS and HGTV, citing declines in ad spend and the looming end of its TV-rights pact with the NBA. Paramount, meanwhile, wrote down the value of its cable business, which includes networks such as MTV and Nickelodeon, by nearly $6 billion, citing declines in operations as well as its projected merger with Skydance Media.
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Most of the TV companies have kept details of their “upfront” negotiations close to the vest. Many of them have noted increases in overall commitments, but have not offered more granular detail of where the money was placed and from what platforms it may have been pulled.
Disney, for example, said it expected a rise of 5% in its overall upfront commitments , noting that advertisers gravitated most to sports and streaming video. Fox said it saw an increase in upfront sales, boosted largely by sports and Tubi. NBCUniversal indicated national sales volume increased in upfront sales, but Comcast President Mike Cavanagh said during the parent company’s recent second-quarter call that “total volume for us is going to be basically in line with last year as is linear price.”
Paramount echoed those sentiments, with co-CEO Chris McCarthy revealing that “linear volume trends were in line with last year.” Warner Bros. Discovery did not disclose broader upfront performance, but noted demand for its Max streaming service and its sports offering. TelevisaUnivision recently indicated it expected a rise in volume in “the single-digit percentage range.”
To grab more money overall, the networks had to cut their rates — in some cases noticeably.
“Buyers were determined to wrest significant concessions from linear TV ad sellers for a second year in a row, something that has not happened in recent history. And they seem to have gotten what they wanted,” Media Dynamics indicated.
The cost of reaching 1,000 viewers, a measure known as a CPM that is central to the annual upfront talks between TV networks and Madison Avenue, fell to $43.35 for broadcast and $20.60 for cable, marking declines of 5.6% and 6.8%, respectively. Meanwhile, the average CPM for a 30-second ad tied to streaming fell by 16.7% — a dynamic that offset TV companies’ efforts to snare more advertising revenue.
Disney was among the companies that agreed to CPM “rollbacks” in certain parts of its portfolio, particularly Disney+, according to four executives familiar with recent upfront talks. Media Dynamics indicated that the networks faced “tougher negotiations” as well as “a shifting of dollars to FASTS
and Amazon or YouTube, all of which offered more favorable CPM pricing options.”
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