TVB: Cable's Best Isn't Even a Top-100 Show

Cable may be attracting more eyeballs, but the biggest individual attractions on television are still on broadcast. That's the message from the Television Bureau of Advertising.

Cable has been crowing that, for the second year in a row, the 53 ad-supported, Nielsen-rated cable networks drew a larger share of the prime time audience than the seven English-language broadcast nets. The split was 50.3% for cable to 44.6% for broadcast. But, cautions TVB President Chris Rohrs, those percentages need to be put in context, namely Nielsen's list of the top-rated TV shows in 2003 (see page 13).

"For all the talk of cable surpassing broadcast," he says, "it is fascinating that the top cable program is [ranked] 258."

That 258th-ranked show was TNT's NBA All-Star Game, which scored 6.65 when rated according to total U.S. households rather than the cable-universe rating that some cable networks more commonly report. By contrast, broadcast's biggest show, ABC's Super Bowl, had five times the audience, with a 33.14.

Advertisers, Rohrs contends, look to buy strong programming, and broadcast has the highest rated shows. Even middling broadcast shows attract a higher rating than many cable programs.

So far, the 2003-04 season has been difficult for the broadcast networks, with few new hits and a lot of misses. The only new drama to claw its way into Rohrs' top 100 broadcast shows is CBS's Cold Case.

Cable executives say buying those big numbers on broadcast isn't always easy. To get that spot on Friends, an advertiser has to typically buy a weekly or monthly schedule that includes some lesser shows, they say.

They also say broadcast's gross rating points are eroding and pricing keeps going up. Cable, their argument goes, can match broadcast reach and deliver a more efficient price. "It is time to buy something else," says Turner Broadcasting research chief Jack Wakshlag. "The argument is that [advertisers] buy too much broadcast."

From January to September 2003, advertisers awarded 71% of ad dollars to the broadcast networks and 29% to ad-supported cable, according to Nielsen Media Research. And cable nets haven't been able to chip away very much at the cost-per-thousand (CPM) gap between broadcast and cable.

David Levy, President, Turner entertainment group sales and marketing, says pricing for cable's entertainment programming is beginning to edge upward. More big-name cable acquisitions and originals will further the cause, he suggests: "We're getting more towards reality than perception."