PRB
September 7th, 2009, 07:57
Does anyone out there know how this business of selling and airing commercials during sporting events works? This subject of “too many commercials” always comes up when discussing race coverage, and I noticed an odd comment from “the booth” during the last rain-delayed race on ESPN. As NASCAR kept adding “one more lap” before they waved the green flag, one of the announcers, as he went to break, again, said that all these commercials at the start of the race meant that they could cover more green-flag racing interruption free later in the race.
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Is this true? Say you’re president of Viaga, and you want to sell commercials on the next ESPN NASCAR event. Do you have to pay for each individual commercial add that gets aired, or do you get a “package deal” (get it…?) that says they (ESPN) can air that stupid Viaga commercial 10 times during a normal race or 57 times if the race is red flagged for three hours because of rain? If Viagra Inc. has to pay for each individual airing, then Alan Bestwick’s comment about playing all the commercials at the start of the race because of a rain delay really would be true, right? Because then Viagra would get 10 commercials during a particular race broadcast, and when those ten were up, that’s it. And if every company’s adds were all played and they were only half way through the three hour rain delay, then they would “run out” of commercials to play at some point during that event.
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But if, instead, ESPN has agreed to play the stupid Viagra commercial every five minutes regardless of the length of the broadcast, then Alan Bestwick was trying to “blow smoke” (as it were) when he suggested that playing them more frequently at the start of the broadcast meant less to have to watch later.
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Just curious. It’s a complicated business, I suppose. At one of the racing sites a few years ago somebody, who said he was in the business, tried to explain how it all worked, and my head exploded about half way through.
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
Is this true? Say you’re president of Viaga, and you want to sell commercials on the next ESPN NASCAR event. Do you have to pay for each individual commercial add that gets aired, or do you get a “package deal” (get it…?) that says they (ESPN) can air that stupid Viaga commercial 10 times during a normal race or 57 times if the race is red flagged for three hours because of rain? If Viagra Inc. has to pay for each individual airing, then Alan Bestwick’s comment about playing all the commercials at the start of the race because of a rain delay really would be true, right? Because then Viagra would get 10 commercials during a particular race broadcast, and when those ten were up, that’s it. And if every company’s adds were all played and they were only half way through the three hour rain delay, then they would “run out” of commercials to play at some point during that event.
<o:p></o:p>
But if, instead, ESPN has agreed to play the stupid Viagra commercial every five minutes regardless of the length of the broadcast, then Alan Bestwick was trying to “blow smoke” (as it were) when he suggested that playing them more frequently at the start of the broadcast meant less to have to watch later.
<o:p></o:p>
Just curious. It’s a complicated business, I suppose. At one of the racing sites a few years ago somebody, who said he was in the business, tried to explain how it all worked, and my head exploded about half way through.