TV News May Face Resistance From Advertisers in Upfront Market

variety.com:

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor CNN on Wednesday broadcast one of the most controversial news events of the year, a runaway town hall interview with former President Donald Trump, and advertisers like Subaru and Fidelity Investments went along for the ride.

There are new questions about whether all of Madison Avenue will do so in the future. The nation’s big TV-news outlets are about to enter what should be a healthy cycle.

The closer the U.S. gets to a presidential election, the more audiences tend to watch. CNN, for example, has indicated it expects to telecast more primetime town halls with candidates (last week’s lured nearly 3.31 million viewers), while Fox News Channel is expected to broadcast the Republican Party’s first primary debate in August.

These types of events usually snare big hauls of advertising. And yet, there are signs that advertisers are weary of the hassles their support of news programming will bring, with some media buyers predicting advertisers will opt to pull back on news spending, even as the race for the White House in 2024 heats up.