With the three broadcast network evening newscasts continuing to erode viewers year after year, NBC is getting creative with its ad sales pitches this upfront season. In a nutshell, NBC News is arguing that while its audience is older than many entertainment programs, it is also more engaged, and more likely to spend… with an added twist, as Advertising Age‘s Brian Steinberg reports:
As a new round of highly-scrutinized data confirms the continued erosion of traditional viewership for broadcast-TV news, NBC is pitching its “NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams” to advertisers with a new angle: TV-news audiences may be older than others, but their interest in and receptivity to advertising is slightly stronger. And, oh yes, advertising on the nightly newscast is significantly cheaper than, say, “CSI: New York” or “The Big Bang Theory.”
“One could argue that, given the long-held perceptions” about evening newscasts, “we haven’t gotten the full value that I think we perhaps should have for ‘Nightly News,'” said John Kelly, senior VP-ad sales, NBC News/MSNBC. NBC has primarily been pitching marketers other than those in the pharmaceutical and personal-care categories, which make up almost two-thirds of “Nightly’s” ad base, he said.
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Or as Steinberg writes later on, noting that drugs take up a disproportionate amount of ad space on “Nightly”:
“Snaring advertisers more accustomed to prime time — telecommunications marketers, electronic-device manufacturers, fast-food outlets and movie studios — would literally help TV news wean itself off of drugs.”
Will the strategy work? It is too early to tell, with the upfront just getting under way, but media buyers tend to be a savvy bunch, and are often set in their ways. If brands want to reach young consumers, the evening newscasts simpy aren’t as good a fit as shows like “Family Guy” or “Gossip Girl.”
The burden is on NBC to prove that the older viewers that watch the nightly newscasts are worth targeting just as much as the coveted 18-49 year olds. That is a change that is unlikely to be made in a single upfront season.