• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, July 20, 2006

About the time this magazine reaches your mailbox, many of you won't be around to read it. Some will be physically away on summer vacations. Others will be mentally away, in the lazy, hazy, lackadaisical nature of the season. Magazines, in particular, are notorious for their summertime blues. Readership gets light and more casual, as does much of the reading matter. Some skip issues, or publish special "double" issues, in recognition that neither their staff nor their readers have the same disposition for magazine content that they have the rest of the year.

And it's not just magazines. Other media historically have a summer hiatus. Television is well known for its "Summer Season," which in Nielsen parlance translates into lower levels of people using television, and lower ratings for most TV shows. But as West Coast Editor Wayne Friedman shows in this issue, much of that is changing. People may be more active, more mobile, and less like the prototypical couch potatoes Madison Ave. has known and loved, but their TV viewing patterns are every bit as dynamic   maybe more so  during the summer months as they are during the rest of the year. Many hits are incubated during the summer, an innovation Fox pioneered early on, which most broadcast and cable networks have emulated with great success. The summer is also the most dynamic marketing period for the new fall season, and is a key determinant in the sampling and success of many new fall shows.

Even Nielsen has recognized the changes with its new "extended home" panel to augment its in-home panel, following people into places where they watch TV when they're not at home, like college campuses and vacation homes. That makes sense to even the most prickly negotiators on Madison Ave., many of whom have objected to measuring regular year-round viewing in other out-of-home locations, such as bars, restaurants, hotels, etc. It's an explicit recognition that a medium like television has seasonal variations.

It's hard to say exactly how this impacts other media, but people clearly use many media differently during the dog days. The summer is prime time for the movie industry and the book publishing worlds, and for certain types of outdoor advertising. Radio usage changes during the summer months, when the audio medium is more about being outside and less about drive time.

In fact, there are certain kinds of media that exist primarily during the summer. Airborne media like sky-writing, airplane-toted messages, and the Goodyear and Fuji blimps transcend media buys and become summertime attractions for many a beach-goer. But beyond location, platform, and format, this month's issue explores an even bigger theme: Can a season be a medium? Does the summer connote a certain kind of message sensibility that is different from other times of the year?

Where summer is concerned, Madison Ave. also has a certain seasonality. For one thing, the third quarter is lightest in terms of total ad volume, and it's not because of September. The ad business also appears to go on vacation each summer. You can see it in many of the industry's business practices.

One of the first stories I ever covered about the ad business was about Madison Ave.'s summer work schedules. I was a cub reporter at Adweek in the early 1980s, and I was amazed to learn how many variations there were on the summer slacking theme. Half-day Fridays; alternate staff Fridays; full weeks off during the dog days of August. Not long after, I began covering the network TV business and was equally amazed to learn about certain upfront sales practices  like the fact that advertisers, agencies, and the networks like got get things wrapped up before Fourth of July weekend.

In more recent years, the upfront deadline was moved up to Memorial Day Weekend. But this year, at least, looks to be a full working summer. Some say upfront deals may not be done until Labor Day.