UPDATE: Viacom CEO: Upfront Season To Be Longer This Year
May 27 2009 - 4:10PM
Dow Jones News
Viacom Inc. (VIA, VIAB) Chief Executive Philippe Dauman said
Wednesday that it's "probable" that the upfront season will drag on
longer this year as advertisers move cautiously amid the economic
recession, but he said the outlook continues to improve.
"The tone is much better than it was a couple months ago,"
Dauman said at an investor conference hosted by Sanford C.
Bernstein.
The annual upfront season, when TV networks showcase their new
programming lineups for the fall and lock down advance deals with
advertisers, recently concluded in New York. In their
presentations, network executives tried to counter gloomy
assessments of ad markets as analysts predicted a year-over-year
decline in ad spending at the upfronts of 10% to 25%.
At the same time, network executives stressed that upfront
dealmaking will likely continue late into the summer and that they
would be confident in their prospects if advertisers wait until the
season gets underway to try their hand in the so-called scatter
market. That sentiment partly reflects strategic posturing as ad
buyers lobby for lower prices and sellers project a willingness to
wait them out.
Dauman said that some ad categories, like fast food restaurants,
remain strong and that pricing "has held up well."
"I think we're at a point in time where there has been
stabilization," he said. "We've seen it now for a number of weeks
going back to March, where the deterioration we saw at the end of
last year and the beginning of this year stopped."
Shares of Viacom traded recently at $23.66, down 36 cents.
-By Nat Worden, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-5216;
nat.worden@dowjones.com