Broadcasters fare pretty well in ad sales

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: The biggest broadcast television networks are concluding surprisingly good advance advertising sales for the 2008-09 season.

The networks—ABC, CBS, CW, Fox and NBC—are finishing up what is known as the upfront market, called that because they sell commercial time ahead of a new TV season. It appears, from discussions with network executives and industry analysts, that the broadcasters may have matched the $9.1 billion to $9.2 billion they took in last spring before the start of the 2007-08 season.

Several forecasts in April and May held that the upfront market for 2008-09 would be better for buyers than sellers because of the uncertainties caused by the national economy.

There were also predictions that the broadcasters would lose sales to the lingering effects of the writers’ strike, which led viewers to switch from broadcast TV to cable TV or online video. “If you look at this in a broader context,” for broadcast TV “to be relatively flat in an expanding media marketplace, being able to preserve its share, is remarkable,” said Joe Mandese, editor at MediaPost, an online and print trade publication.

“Even in this age of digital lust, people still demand what they know will deliver in the old way,” he added, despite caveats.

Among those caveats is the fact that several broadcasters sold more of their inventories of commercial time in this upfront market than they did in the upfront market for 2007-08.

Typically, a network will sell about 75% of its commercial inventory in an upfront market. In this instance, the percentages were as high as 80 to 85%.

Because of the continuing declines in ratings for the broadcast networks, “buyers need to reserve whatever they can find”—not unlike the market for oil. In such a scenario, flat is the new up.