2022 Upfronts

New measurement providers got a workout in the upfront — 85% of the networks surveyed by the Video Advertising Bureau said they increased their use or investment in alternate audience data providers. Most deals continued to be done using Nielsen, but the networks and advertisers were aggressive in talking about trying out alternate services because of complaints about Nielsen undercounting viewers and losing its accreditation from the Media Rating Council.

Roku said it secured more than $1 billion in commitments from advertisers during the upfront market, a record for the streaming platform. With more consumers cutting the cord and shifting to streaming, Roku has positioned itself as an alternative to traditional TV. Roku said its upfront negotiation happened concurrently with the broadcast networks, signaling a strategic shift to TV streaming for brands.

Media Dynamics preliminary estimates find that five broadcast TV networks took in $9.9 billion in primetime sales — up a modest 6.4% from the previous upfront — while the cable channels sold $10.2 billion, a 5.2% increase. In total, the “linear TV” upfront was up 5.8%, to $20.1 billion.

CBS, NBC, Fox, Univision and some of their brethren are cheering about the upfront, when U.S. TV networks try to sell the bulk of their ad inventory in advance of the next cycle of programming. They have some reason to do so. By many accounts, the volume of advertising commitments they won is up over last year. At the same time, the networks drove that ad cash to the bank by agreeing to smaller rate hikes — usually a flashing sign they lack some leverage in the market. What’s more, uncertainty in the macroeconomic environment weighed heavily on discussions.

The Walt Disney Co. said it completed its upfront deals with the major media holding companies, registering commitments to buy a record $9 billion in advertising across entertainment, streaming sports and inclusion. Disney Advertising said the market was driven by live events, the upcoming ad-supported tier of Disney+ and addressable and measurement offerings.

TV networks continue to fare better than expected in the current “upfront” market as they harness streaming video and sports — and a willingness to accept lower rates — in order to keep Madison Avenue’s money flowing. NBCUniversal said it wrapped its negotiations in the annual upfront, and could see advance advertising commitments for NBC’s primetime schedule rise by as much as 20%. Variety estimates that upfront commitments for NBC primetime could total between $3.2 billion and $3.4 billion, compared to between $2.68 billion and $2.98 billion for its primetime broadcast inventory in 2021. In 2020, NBC secured between $2.68 billion and $2.84 billion.

Rapidly growing connected TV (CTV) ad revenues are expected to climb 35% to $6.41 billion this year — from “upfront” sales — and to rise another 35% to $8.14 billion in 2023, according to eMarketer’s projections. This estimate includes all CTV advertising deals made in advance, resulting from the traditional TV upfronts, IAB NewFronts and other events.

Scoring strong upfront ad market revenue results, Spanish-language media group, TelevisaUnivision posted “double-digit” volume growth, according to a media executive close to the company — its best result in seven years. The media company posted “high single digit” cost-per-thousand viewer increases versus the upfront market of a year ago. A TelevisaUnivision representative had no comment with regard to the upfront negotiations.

The CW has wrapped upfront negotiations, according to a person familiar with the matter, and expects a rise in advance ad commitments for its digital venues, but sees its primetime broadcast schedule take in similar volume to last year’s market. Variety estimates that CW may have seen primetime volume come in between $440.8 million and $626.9 million, in 2021, compared with $440.8 million and $$597.1 million in 2020.

Despite weakness in the current scatter market, NBCUniversal is pretty much finished with its upfront ad-market deals, with total volume near that of a year ago, according to Jeff Shell, chief executive officer of NBCUniversal. “So we’re pretty much done, just a smattering of things still finishing up,” said Shell, speaking at the Credit Suisse media conference. “High single digits [percentage increase] was our pricing … we had expected kind of mid-single digits coming into the upfront. So I’m thrilled with that.”

The TV upfront advertising market is well underway with NBCUniversal, Walt Disney and Fox Corp. making deals at modest cost-per-thousand viewer (CPM) increases in pricing, according to media agency executives — rising at “high single to low double-digit [percentage] increases,” according to one media buyer.

The technology giant has been telling TV networks and media buyers that it intends to bypass TV’s annual haggle for commercial inventory, according to four executives familiar with recent discussions. The company behind such products and services as Windows, LinkedIn, the Halo video games and Surface tablets instead favors taking its chances in what is known as TV’s “scatter” market, the purchase of ad time bought closer to run date.

In the middle of an upfront in which measurement is a key issue, one of the biggest media buyers in the world is making its position clear on what it will use for currency in 2022-23 and how it is preparing for the future. GroupM said it will continue to transact using Nielsen data for the upfronts. But it also said it will be using alternative currencies, including outcome-based approaches, with a dozen of its largest clients to shadow its Nielsen-based deals.

Latenight hosts are brought in by networks to provide comic relief at their upfront presentations. But turns out Seth Meyers was only half joking when he told the thousands who had packed Radio City Music Hall for NBCUniversal’s presentation, “What a historic room to be able to tell people you got COVID in.” Ten days later, COVID cases are sweeping through the ranks of those who attended the marathon of events in New York last week. Top-level executives at virtually all of the major networks and studios have been impacted, along with support staff that worked on the presentations as well as media buyers and reporters who attended the string of events.

Upfront Week is over, the live events happening at New York’s posh midtown theaters — and a giant basketball facility down on the Lower East Side–for the first time in a few years, with Covid cancelling the shindigs in 2020 and 2021. The last time the broadcast networks shared their fall programming, those networks, including ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC, had center stage. This time, they shared the bill with their streaming siblings. The CBS upfront presentation is now the Paramount one, ABC is now Disney, and NBC is now NBCUniversal.

Without mentioning CNN+, new CNN CEO Chris Licht on Wednesday set out the company’s plans for the rudderless news network. Those plans involve a morning show, a Sunday-night showcase and avoiding the kinds of advocacy journalism that has infected cable news. (Photo: Getty Images for Warner Bros. Discovery)

HBO Max and Discovery Plus, brought together when Discovery acquired WarnerMedia, are still likely to be combined, the newly combined Warner Bros. Discovery told media buyers at its inaugural upfront presentation. “In the not-too-distant future, we see a unique possibility to bring all these incredible stories and brands that shape culture, that delight, amaze and inform global consumers, and bring home these remarkable moments across all these genres, in one, awesome global streaming product,” JB Perrette, Warner Bros. Discovery’s head of global streaming, said at the upfront Wednesday.

The most watched network follows other broadcasters in opting for light adjustments to its primetime lineup. Above,  So Help Me Todd, a legal drama with some comic elements, will air at 9 p.m. on Thursdays

While every network presenting at this year’s upfronts is highlighting their streaming wares and linear offerings, executives from TelevisaUnivision are approaching sales meetings with an ace up their sleeves: Its linear TV ratings are on the rise.

ABC’s breakout comedy Abbott Elementary will move to a new night — and a prime location on the network’s schedule — in the fall. The show will anchor the network’s Wednesday comedy block, moving into the 9 p.m. slot. ABC’s lineup to start the 2022-23 season will feature a pair of new dramas in The Rookie: Feds and the Hilary Swank-led Alaska, along with a Celebrity Jeopardy game show on Sunday nights. The network is also making a big bet on Bachelor in Paradise, which will air on both Monday and Tuesday nights — replacing the Disney+-bound Dancing With the Stars on Mondays.

Three huge matchups to kick off the college football season, a new Australian Open agreement and two new 30 for 30 documentaries will be announced Tuesday by ESPN as part of its upfront presentation to advertisers in New York.

In Monday’s traditional doubleheader opening of the upfronts in New York, Fox and NBCUniversal executives took shots at the “paywall” strategy of Netflix and Disney, in the first of many salvos expected this week.

The old wall between Fox and Fox News is more of a sheer curtain these days. Evidence of the blurring between the pillars of Rupert Murdoch’s media behemoth can be seen in Rudy Giuliani’s recent turn on entertainment flagship The Masked Singer — and the network brass’ nonchalance over criticism for the casting choice. Brand identity got even blurrier late Monday afternoon, when, for the first time, a “One Fox” upfront pitch to advertisers placed as much emphasis on conservative cable news outfit Fox News Media as it did on the broadcast network, sports division and ad-supported streamer Tubi.

It’s an upfronts miracle: Fox and 20th Television have closed Season 6 renewals of 9-1-1 and The Resident for the 2022-23 season. Negotiations were completed shortly before the Fox upfront presentation’s 4 p.m. ET start on Monday dso the two venerable dramas could be included in the network’s pitch to advertisers.

Each upfront takes on its own character, but 2022 will have its own character if only because buyers and clients are flocking to New York to take in the extravagant shows television companies put on in venerable venues like Radio City Music Hall and Carnegie Hall. Given that, there are still some big questions that will be answered this week as the presentations roll out and in the next few weeks as negotiations over about $20 billion worth of advertising for the 2022-23 season take place. Above: Then-CBS ad sales chief Jo Ann Ross with Jon Batiste and Stay Human in 2019.

In the three years since the television industry’s biggest companies pitched their shows to advertisers in person at the upfronts, the entertainment industry has been flipped on its head.

When the dust settled after a frantic day today, the CW was left with 11 original scripted series — new and returning — on tap for next season. That is down from from 19 (including Stargirl whose future is unclear) picked up for the 2021-22 season last year. While there is contraction across the board on linear networks, the drop at the CW is significant and follows years of expansion that resulted in the network adding two extra nights of original programing on Sundays and Saturdays and also years of the CW rubber-stamping its scripted portfolio with the vast majority of series automatically returning regardless of their ratings performance.

Ad sales chief Jon Steinlauf sees demand for streaming, but “linear moves products off the shelves.”

How TV’s next emerging categories are shaping the future.

We may have the first broadcast upfront where a network does not present a fall schedule this year. Fox is said to be considering not unveiling a grid at its May 16 event on the first day of the traditional upfront week. In the untraditional approach the network is mulling, it would have a unified linear and streaming presentation, in which Fox’s new and returning series will be highlighted but the actual fall schedule may be released a few days later. For now, ABC, CBS, NBC and the CW all plan to unveil fall schedules at the upfronts, even as ABC and NBC will only have a fraction of their pilots delivered and screened for consideration by then.

First- and second-quarter TV scatter advertising inventory is showing weak “visibility” in activity, resulting in some soft pricing — a trend that might portend a weaker-than-expected upfront market, set to commence in a few weeks. John Muszynski, chairman of Publicis Media Exchange, says the market has been very “soft” since the beginning of the first quarter.

To Roku, the 60th anniversary of the upfront is a good time to make streaming a more important part of advertisers’ TV budgets. “This year, our goal is to really shake up the upfronts,” Kristina Shepard, head of agency partnerships and national brand team lead for Roku, says.

While most big ad agencies have intimated plans to utilize so-called “alternative currencies” — audience measurement estimates other than Nielsen’s — as part of testing and learning about what works best in this year’s upfront advertising marketplace, Horizon Media this morning put a hard number around it: 15%. The agency said it has committed to transacting “up to 15% of its deals” in the 2022-23 upfront TV advertising marketplace using “alternate currencies.”

Sinclair Broadcast Group wants advertisers to move 20% of their cable ad budgets into its free over-the-air digital networks to capture cord-cutters. In addition to its slew of TV stations, Sinclair owns Comet, Charge and TBD, collectively branded as The Stack. In its upfront pitch, Sinclair is informing buyers that those cord-cutters leaving cable aren’t just moving to streaming channels; they’re also buying antennas to watch familiar shows — soon to include Buffy the Vampire Slayer — for free on its diginets.

With Discovery completing its acquisition of WarnerMedia, the two companies’ scheduled upfronts are being combined into a single event next month. The first Warner Bros. Discovery upfront will be held during the week once reserved for the broadcast networks’ presentations on May 18 at the Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden — about four weeks after the transaction closed.