EXCLUSIVE: 'ER' Finale Ad Spots Fetching $425,000
NBC waves goodbye to Thursday night stalwart
By Claire Atkinson -- Broadcasting & Cable, 2/20/2009 1:44:17 PM EST
NBC is out shopping the finale of the fifteen-year-old hospital drama series, ER, and is asking $425,000 for a thirty-second spot during the television event.
The last episode airs on April 2 and will feature a get together of former cast members including George Clooney, Noah Wyle and Anthony Edwards. The two-hour episode begins at 9 p.m. and will be preceded by a one-hour retrospective of the series.
According to TNS Media Intelligence which tracks rate card ad pricing, thirty-second spots in this season's show were selling for $135,000. Each broadcast of ER nets NBC $2,878,000. Media buyers say the show is selling for between $425,000 and $500,000.
The network is replacing ER the following week with another John Wells production, Southland, which focuses on the lives of the men and women of the Los Angeles Police Department. For much of the nineties ER and Friends represented an unbeatable Thursday night line up for NBC.
The ER finale is the first big, broadcast network show send-off in some time. CBS waved goodbye to Everybody Loves Raymond, in 2005 and charged $1.3 million for a thirty-second spot in that event. In 2004, NBC sent Friends off air with a nice payday charging advertisers $2.3 million for a thirty-second spot.
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