Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorTV’s upfront market is starting to close and ad dollars seem harder to collect.NBCUniversal expects the volume of advance advertising commitments secured in the annual haggle to be “in the same range as last year,” according to Jeff Shell, CEO of the Comcast owned unit.
He said that declines due to “cord cutting were offset by pricing and Peacock for us,” during remarks made at an investor conference organized by Credit Suisse.
Variety estimated that NBCU secured between $2.68 billion and $2.98 billion in 2021, compared with $2.68 billion and $2.84 billion in 2020.
TV networks try to sell the bulk of their commercial inventory for their next programming cycle in this annual negotiation between media companies and Madison Avenue. “We are pretty much done,” said Shell, noting that NBCU still had a “smattering” of inventory to sell.NBCU’s results reflect a somewhat softer market for TV.
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