• by Wayne Friedman , July 11, 2007

TV sports programmers from ESPN to broadcast network sports departments and everyone in between will be offering program rating guarantees for their live sports programs this year, according to media buying and selling executives.

This is in sharp contrast to all non-sports TV programs that were sold to advertisers in the upfront season with C3 promises--commercial ratings plus three days of DVR viewing.

Commercial ratings can be anywhere from 2% to as much as 12%--depending on the network--below that of their respective program ratings. This year, TV programmers in large part switched from selling program ratings guarantees to advertisers to commercial ratings guarantees.

An ESPN spokeswoman did not respond by press time.

One media sales executive could not speculate on where this left taped sports programs or sports news shows, such as ESPN's "SportsCenter" program or its ESPN News network.

Media research executives say virtually all live sports programming is viewed live or nearly live, with perhaps a couple of minutes delay. All that means is that there is little time-shifting coming from DVRs.

Recently, all TV networks--CBS, Fox, ESPN, and NBC--selling advertising inventory in the NFL were getting major price hikes in the cost-per-thousand viewers for this upcoming season. They saw anywhere from high single-digit increases to as much as 20% or more for NBC's "Sunday Night Football."