• by Paul Gough , September 30, 2003

Add cable TV giant Comcast Corp. to the growing list of companies interested in taking a share of next year's upfront network TV ad sales marketplace.

Comcast, which already participates in the upfront via its E!, The Golf Channel and Outdoor Life Network cable networks, but President-CEO Brian Roberts Tuesday said Comcast's burgeoning spot cable TV sales organization has its eye on the upfront marketplace.

Comcast, the nation's largest cable company with about 30 million subscribers in 71 markets, including 22 of the top 25 cities, has been aggressively building an elite sales team to push the two-minutes of local ad inventory it retains each hour from the avails of the ad-supported cable networks carried by its systems.

Roberts, speaking to the financial community during Goldman Sachs' Communicopia conference in New York, said Comcast has invested between $10 million and $15 million to build a spot cable sales infrastructure, hiring 50 experienced ad sales people and bringing in Charlie Thurston, who ran the Los Angeles interconnect, to head the sales effort.

Roberts noted that cable's advertising business today is predominantly local, comprising smaller advertisers that can't afford broadcast. But Comcast sees a different future, using so-called interconnects to put together packages that sell the avails on a broader scale and with better targeting. He said Comcast soon will be in a position to sell "40 channels with a cumulative rating higher than all the broadcasters combined."

Comcast - as well as other big cable operators and the industry's top spot sales firm, National Cable Communications - have been trying to raise the profile of spot cable with blue-chip advertisers.

Spot television ad sales are a $27 billion market, with $23 billion going to broadcast stations and $3.6 billion going to spot cable. That fact hasn't been lost on the cable operators, which through NCC held an upfront-style presentation to media planners and buyers in the spring. And for Comcast in particular, which depends on advertising for only about 6.5% of its total revenues, it's definitely a place to grow.

"[In] spot television and at the upfront, we will be trying to find a new revenue here," Roberts said.