It looks like this year's upfront isn't going to be as "protracted" as some predicted. "Life is good," is how Peggy Green, Zenith President/National Broadcast described the marketplace to us, interrupting one of the many meetings she's having this week.
Zenith, OMD, GroupM, Initiative and Magna Global are controlling most of the big inventory deals right now with the broadcast networks. NBC is already about 70% percent done with CPM increases of 5%, boosted with the recent deal with GroupM (6/14/07 TVBR #116).
Fox is reportedly the first to completely wrap up primetime deals with the major media agencies, raking in a personal record 1.8 billion in primetime alone (at 8% CPM increases); CBS is well past halfway wrapping primetime with most of the big agencies, with 7-8% CPM increases reported. ABC's Sales Chief Mike Shaw is beginning to do deals, reportedly in the 10% CPM increase range for primetime ad inventory. Talks are only beginning with The CW; budgets are starting to flow in for cable and syndication. For cable, Starcom so far closed a deal with 10 Discovery Networks, incorporating Nielsen's Commercial Minute data.
