It’s tough out
there, but DR
products make it
more fun to stay
home and wait out
the storm.
This time last year, cable DRTV sales executives spoke nthusiastically about short-form pricing increases and were hopeful that long-form would catch up throughout he remainder of 2010. As the year came to a close, media
buyers reported that short-form tightened up somewhat as general
advertisers trickled back into the marketplace, but long-form still afforded deep discounts if their clients could endure the tepid purchasing power of the economic doldrums.
Networks experienced more of the same heading into 2011, reporting price increases
in short-form and marginal improvement in long-form.
“The advertising marketplace throughout 2010 was robust, television in particular,
and DR was an important contributor to CNN ad sales overall success,” says Jason
Baron, senior vice president of Turner Direct Response, which includes major networks
CNN, TBS, tru TV and the Cartoon Network. “The fourth-quarter scatter market
was active and that has carried over into 1Q 2011. Short-form pricing has continued
to increase in all of our divisions. For long-form, the rates continue to fluctuate on a
monthly basis.”
Similar trends played out across the Discovery Networks, which includes the Dis-
covery Channel, Animal Planet, TLC and Oprah Winfrey’s new OWN.
“On the cable side, long-form advertising has taken the biggest hit, as there have
not been many new advertisers, and the broadcast networks continued to increase the
amount of total paid programming on their networks as needed,” says Maria Kennedy,
senior vice president at Discovery Communications and a member of the Response Editorial Advisory Board. “Short-form continues to grow and increase its advertiser base.”
Response Magazine’s own research showed third-quarter 2010 long-form media bill-
ings rising a slight 0.3 percent to $244,624,200, but the average cost of a half-hour
