• Advertising Age , Friday, March 13, 2009 9:33 AM

To promote its flagship morning show, "Good Morning America," ABC has bought ads in rival early-bird programming, including CNN's "American Morning." In other words, when CNN's John Roberts cuts to a commercial break, you might see an ad suggesting you change the channel to watch GMA's Diane Sawyer instead.

Since rival networks were not likely to accept an ad from ABC News, ABC made the purchases through local cable operators in the top 10 national markets, allowing its GMA ads to run between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. on a range of cable-news channels. ABC's approach is the latest use of local ad time to circumvent the awkward times when a particular TV network would prefer not to run a certain ad.

Alan Ives, executive producer at ABC News, says it makes sense to hunt on other channels for non-GMA watchers and hope to lure them from competitors' programs. "It's easier to convert someone who has the TV on at the time than it is to run a print ad to get them to remember."

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