upfronts 2012

The Sony Pictures Television comedy has been renewed for a fourth season consisting of 13 episodes.

The network has renewed flagship animated comedy Family Guy for an 11th season and American Dad for an eighth with 22-epsiode ofders for each.

The owner of A&E, History and Lifetime took jabs at everyone from Discovery to TBS to YouTube at its upfront presentation to advertisers.

Both comedies had been yanked from the network’s schedule last month. The comedies join canceled dramas Alcatraz and The Finder at the network this season, while Fox has given series orders to comedies starring Mindy Kaling, Scott Foley and Nat Faxon.

The cable network will air season 4 of the Courteney Cox sitcom and gets the rights to the earlier three seasons that aired on ABC.

Broadcast television networks are going for laughs to attract viewers, pitching new comedies at next week’s annual upfront presentations to advertising buyers.The big four U.S. broadcast networks — ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC — are all coming to the television industry’s annual rite with new comedies, a format that helps lower viewer age for older-skewing broadcast networks.

Though ABC is in fourth place this season, it’s still had a relatively decent year. Its average is flat to last year among adults 18-49, and after years of struggling to launch successful new shows, it has a handful of first-year dramas and comedies with potential. But its main problem remains the same as last year. Its top shows are aging and need to be replaced or rejuvenated.

Looking to generate advertiser interest prior to the upfront, ABC said its full-episode app for Apple devices has passed the 5 million mark in downloads. That’s up from the 3 million that ABC told MediaPost it had surpassed less than six months ago.

While upfront negotiations aren’t likely to begin until the end of the month, Les Moonves believes the outcome is a fait accompli. Speaking to investors Tuesday afternoon during CBS Corp.’s first quarter earnings call, the company’s president and CEO pulled no punches. “We led the upfront last year and I guarantee we will lead it again this year, both in volume and CPMs,” Moonves said, adding that his sales team will push hard on pricing.

At their first Digital Content NewFronts in New York, AOL, Hulu, Microsoft, Yahoo and YouTube tout their professional-grade content to advertisers the way major television networks do.

There are lots of reasons why TV budgets aren’t likely to move — at least for now.

Whether the NewFronts will spark a TV-style upfront market isn’t clear. But, the first series of events has already been a huge success from a marketing perspective.

AOL promoted a slate of new programming at its digital content “newfront” aimed at luring TV buyers with takes on familiar concepts, such as crime-scene investigations and housewife angst, that have made fortunes for the networks in the last decade.

NBC is seeking an ambitious sum for 30-second spots in its new Thanksgiving-night NFL broadcast, a signal that discussions for ad time in football could heat up in the weeks leading to the annual upfront haggling sessions between advertisers and TV networks.

Despite their popularity, unscripted shows play understudy to more expensive fare. Reality shows account for just three of the 92 projects on the 2012-13 broadcast development slate, a disproportionate allowance given the enthusiasm of the American TV audience.

The upfront market, in which media buyers and TV networks negotiate advertising for the coming TV season, may be even more robust than analysts have been predicting. Total sales will be up by 3% or more, and the networks will see very healthy CPM increases. That’s the prediction of media buyers and planners, asked to weigh in on the prospects for this year’s upfront market in a poll taken last week.

The video website reports $420 million in revenue last year, but it is spending even more to develop new shows, including projects from Adrian Grenier, Michael Wendschuh, Seth Meyers and Richard Linklater.

Beginning Thursday, many of the top digital outlets will for the first time band together to try an old TV tradition: the upfront. Over the next two weeks, YouTube, Yahoo, AOL, Hulu and others will hold their version of the annual pitch to advertisers to promote their programming.

Hulu will promote its original programming to advertisers this week in the annual ritual known as upfronts that is typically reserved for cable channels and network broadcasters.

Another strong upfront is on tap for TV networks — but not as powerful as a year ago. Versus the hefty 10% to 15% percentage spikes of a year ago, Morgan Stanley media analyst Benjamin Swinburne estimates networks — broadcast and cable — will be in the 5% to 10% range when it comes to CPMs.

Many may still rail against the process, even those traditional TV sellers. And many digital advocates believe they don’t need the upfront. Yet it’s hard not to be part of the conversation when the biggest media platform garners the biggest dollars. Do you want to be in a $20 billion conversation?

Debt ratings service Moody’s Investors Service projects an “advertising windfall” for virtually all traditional media in a report this morning that says auto makers will sell 14 milion vehicles this year, up 9.3% vs 2011.

CBS is launching packaged-goods-specific ratings for the upcoming network upfronts, encouraging marketers in 20 categories to buy based on how heavily audiences consume products rather than just traditional viewership measures.

NBCUniversal is joining other big digital companies in participating in a digital media version of a TV-style “upfront” event — becoming the first traditional media company to do so. For the “Digital Content NewFronts” series of events, NBCUniversal joins AOL, Digitas, Google/YouTube, Hulu, Microsoft Advertising and Yahoo. Plans are set for NBCUniversal to host its presentation May 1 in New York City.

Pivotal Research Group’s Brian Wieser is forecasting that broadcast ad pricing in the upfronts this spring will rise 8% on the assumption that spending by the national marketers will be about the same as last year — $8.9 billion. That’s not only good for broadcasting; that’s good for cable, he says. The “tacit collusion” among the Big Four  insures that the anchor price of all upfront advertising remains high.

General Motors has thrown the transmission in reverse, exercising options to cancel a substantial portion of its second quarter upfront commitments. According to several sources, GM has pulled out of nearly 50% of its 2Q upfront buys in broadcast and cable, the maximum allowable under the terms of network ad contracts.

Pivotal Research Group today released a report predicting that the cost for a thousand impressions (CPMs) in primetime will increase 8% for ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC when they convene with advertisers this spring for their annual upfront selling ritual.

CNBC has signed an upfront deal with agency MPG on behalf of its client Fidelity that offers dual guarantees, based on both Nielsen and Rentrak data. Agreed to during the calendar upfront market, CNBC has guaranteed Fidelity certain audience delivery figures in both the adults 25-to-54 demo (from Nielsen data) and households with incomes of $150,000-plus (from Rentrak).

Spanish-language network Azteca America has wrapped its upfront selling season for commitments running until next fall, increasing volume by 33% to the $40 million-$50 million range. The network said it added 17 new national advertisers, including KFC, Microsoft, Sprint, Verizon and Kraft.

Just as the voices of pundits predicting the demise of the upfronts grow louder, the upfronts defy gravity and become more important within the television advertising world, with the announcement this week that USA Networks will become the latest cable network to join upfront week.