• by Wayne Friedman , June 14, 2005

The cable news part of the upfront ad marketplace has started to slowly creak to life--but that creaking could continue, as it is mired in an overall cable ad marketplace that is growing weaker.

"It's softer than a couple of weeks ago," said one senior media buying executive, who predicted flat to small increases in the 1% to 2% range for CNN, Fox News, CNBC, and MSNBC.

A CNN spokesman said: "We will not discuss specifics, but we have closed initial deals. Discussions are ongoing, and we are progressing along nicely." Neither Fox News or NBC executives returned phone calls by press time.

Fox News is expected to close the gap between it and CNN, grabbing the top end of the expected range. Many of Fox's long-time deals are still set at discount to CNN, as these agreements were inked long before Fox News became the dominant ratings player among cable news networks.

In 2003, according to TNS Media Intelligence, CNN led the way in advertising sales at $424 million; MSNBC was next at $162 million. Fox News was in third place at $112 million. Analysts say Fox has closed in significantly to CNN since then--but has a ways to go to be the top advertising news network.

Network news programming deals--especially early morning news shows--have completed their upfront arrangements. When the smoke of the entire market has cleared, it is expected that network news will do slightly better than cable. Media buyers say that's because many news deals were inked at the same time as the overall stronger network upfront market that includes prime time, daytime, and late night.

The network news market is believed to see higher average overall cost-per-thousand price (CPM) increases--in the 4% to 5% range--than the cable market, which is expected to come just below these numbers, according to media executives.

NBC's "The Today Show," which lost much ground over the last year --now just averaging 6 million viewers to ABC's "Good Morning America" at 5.3 million viewers--has improved a bit in ratings since April, when new Executive Producer Jim Bell took over. Still, "Today"'s lead is just 662,000 viewers currently, whereas it had a 1.3 million advantage a year ago.