- Super Bowl may be boon as tiresome televisi

The Hollywood writers strike, declining television ratings and the budgetary pressures that accompany an economic slowdown have conspired to make it a difficult stretch for U.S. advertisers this year so the Super Bowl couldn't come at a better time.
Always the biggest television event of the annual, Super Bowl XLII has taken on added significance for advertisers look for "event programming Vibram Outlet Store," alternatively shows audiences see live instead of logging to watch later, often skipping commercials.
"As ratings proceed to corrode, the Super Bowl and whichever of the additional huge events look even more glorious than they did before," said Steve Farella, central executive of TargetCast, one independent media purchasing agency.
That is particularly true this year, media experts said, as U.S. audiences have been left without some of the most renowned primetime TV shows because of a 10weekold strike by Hollywood screenwriters. Primetime network ratings were down an estimated 10 percent for the fall season.
"It could be the highestrated Super Bowl in history," said Brad Adgate, mentor of research at Horizon Media. "The competing webs commonly behind down anyway. But with an audience starved for TV entertainment, it could be huge."
Even before the strike, News Corp's Fox Broadcasting had sold more than 90 percent of the commercial time as the February 3 competition football game, with a source versed with the deals mentioning prices climbed as high as $3 million for a 30second spot.
Average prices this year have sprint around $2.7 million, the source said, up from $2.6 million last year when CBS broadcast the game.
Among the advertisers who bought commercial time this year are AnheuserBusch _7627, General Motors, CocaCola and PepsiCo. Only one 30second spot remains for the broadcast, the source said.
RECORDBREAKING TELECAST?
Even by costs approaching $100,000 per second, advertisers who booked period on the Super Bowl broadcast emerge to be winners, especially since the buffet has already occasioned the cancellation of another important proclaiming event, the Golden Globes Awards telecast.
Now the Oscars, second in magnitude merely to the Super Bowl in the ideas of many marketers, could be the afterward martyr of the labor troubles.
David Scardino, an distraction expert with media buying fixed RPA, described the Super Bowl as a "sure entity" for advertisers, addition that a agreeable matchup among crews could make it a blockbuster this year.
"If the undefeated New England Patriots make it to the game Vibram FiveFingers men, the Super Bowl could destroy entire records," he said.
Last year, CBS' broadcast was the secondmost watched Super Bowl of alltime, averaging 93.15 million viewers. Some 94.1 million human tuned in to watch the game in 1996.
"The Super Bowl is all a good investment for it forever does a magnificent digit and you all kas long asyear later year, no stuff who is playing Vibram Five Fingers Flow, that it's working to do a good number," said Andy Donchin, director of national broadcast at media customer Carat North America.
But Donchin points out that it's not simply a matter of advertisers moving their spending from primetime TV to the Super Bowl.
For one thing the Super Bowl essentially sold out months antecedent, and some advertisers refuse to disburse the millions of greenbacks it prices to land a 30second spot. Also, the event is usually best suited for big production launches or amazing commercials.
"The Super Bowl namely a entire other beast," he said. "For namely variety of money you have to have either a fashionable movement or a special commercial."
TargetCast's Farella said Mesothelioma _12474, "When you buy the Super Bowl or the Golden Globes or the Oscars you tend to prepare marketing programs nigh them. Nobody would ever buy them to put in a regular dissemination. You buy them to establish a sale event."
That's one cause a cancellation of the Academy Awards would cause such problems for advertisers, Farella said. "I consider the first thing any marketer would do is obtain right on the call via their agency or instantly with the network and say, 'Settle the strike.'"
Reuters