TV's upfront is hot, but scatter is shot. (cover story)

This article reports on the decreased revenue of the television advertising sector in the U.S. as of July 2002. The TV up front was hot. Advertising prospects for the full TV season are not so hot. The broadcast network prime-time upfront -- the locomotive that moves the market -- posted a whopping 20 percent increase in expected revenue to $8.1 billion for the coming season. That has had media executives hoping for a major turnaround from a year ago, when TV advertisement revenue fell for the first time in a decade. Now, industry executives say expectations should be much more modest. At the end of the coming TV season, overall advertising sales for broadcast network prime time will be up only about 5 percent to $8.6 billion. The TV up front market takes place in late spring and early summer when advertisers buy time for the season that begins in September. Buyers get an option to cancel a percentage of their up front commitments. Scatter is TV time bought during the season on a quarter-by-quarter basis. The broadcast network prime-time upfront rose 20 percent. But scatter sales could fall about 32 percent to $1.5 billion. The sluggish market reflects expectations from media-agency executives that marketers have not increased TV budgets but merely shifted money into the upfront from dollars that otherwise would have been spent next season in scatter.