• by March 24, 2004

HERE'S A HEADLINE YOU DON'T SEE EVERY DAY-ONLY THIS TIME EVERY YEAR: "Upfront Sales Season May Be Turbulent." That headline appeared on top of a story that was published in today's Wall Street Journal, but could have run about this time in just about any preceding year. Just consider the lead paragraph: "The nation's biggest marketers, armed with a slew of reasons to question the effectiveness and the cost of network-television advertising, are taking a skeptical frame of mind as they head into the annual 'upfront' ad-sales season." Heck, the Riff has written virtually that same lead every year for more than we care to count. But the story never seems to change, at least not at this point in the seasonal cycle of the upfront hype process. Later, when the emotional banter subsides, the industry panel debates have ended, the trade press sensationalism has moved to another topic and the buying frenzy is over, will people take stock in just how much they over-bought, over-paid and under-slept. Then the next story in the upfront spin cycle will begin to shift to the tail-between-their-legs rationalization of media buyers who will either say: A) "Yes, the market was stronger than everyone thought, but at least we beat the market by X percent;" or B) "We didn't think the market was that strong, but our clients panicked and told us to buy."

It's a spin cycle that has played out since the dawn of TV buying. How does the Riff know this? Because Fred Danzig, the long-time editor of Advertising Age, once showed us. We were milling around the old Ad Age's office in the Daily News Building in New York (which oddly enough, no longer houses either Ad Age, or the Daily News), when Danzig beckoned the Riff to rows of aged, institutional green metal filing cabinets, which contained seeming even more aged, journalistic yellow news clips of advertising industry news primordial. The cabinets contained Ad Age's "morgue," or in pre-Internet journalistic parlance, it's archives. As the Riff rummaged through the crumbling yellow clips of the 50s, 60s and 70s, he noticed that quite a few of them contained the same type of pre-upfront buyer rhetoric that is apparent in today's Journal article. So the Riff turned to Danzig and postulated, "It doesn't seem like this business has changed a whole lot over the years." Danzig chuckled, raised an eyebrow in a knowing way, and pushed the cabinet draw shut. Case closed. And the year was 1990.

The Riff's education on the network upfront fast-forwards (figuratively, not via a TiVo or other such device) to the late 1990s, when a good friend who was then a top cable network sales strategist and former agency media buying biggie revealed - off the record, of course - the secrets of the upfront spin cycle, which starts with industry panel proclamations, anonymous trade press leaks, an occasional early spring network sports junket, the so-called spring "development" meetings, more trade press proselytizing, a series of cable network upfront wind-ups, which culminate with the big ticket: network upfront "hell week," in which the broadcast networks jockey for position with various glitzy, star-studded events at LincolnRadiocityCarnegieMusic Hall or some such venue, all with one purpose in mind: to make impressionable media buyers and their clients believe that there is something special and different about their wares than the next guy's or the next medium's.

"It's show business," said the friend. "The whole thing is designed to make buyers believe they are a part of the show." The strategy seems to have worked, because for all the protestations and declarations, the upfront continues to exist and function in much the same way it did in those yellowed Ad Age clips.

So here're the Riff's predictions for the 2004-05 upfront sales marketplace:

The WB will break the market within 24-hours of announcing its schedule, fetching CPM gains of between 15 percent and 25 percent, with buyers citing the finite supply of its precious teen/young adult demos. Within days, Fox and CBS will mobilize the rest of the prime-time marketplace, racking up CPM gains of 5 percent to 12 percent, attributed to their must-see reality fare, not to mention CBS' "CSI" franchise. NBC will hold out to "beat the market," thinking it's still the market leader, but will be beaten back by media buyers citing the loss of key shows, and a wide "gap" on the peacock network's 2004-05 ratings estimates. ABC will follow the CBS and Fox leads with slightly more amenable CPM gains of 4 percent to 9 percent, racking up big sales volume as the buyer "friendly" guys. The nets will crow about their record upfront sales volume as proof of the everlasting power of network TV and the value of the upfront sales process. Buyers will say how they beat the market. Advertisers will say, "What's going on here." The ANA will convene its new "Upfront" task force to figure out how to fix things "next year."

The Riff apologizes if today's column reads like you've read it before. The truth is, we've written it before.