US TV networks reach ad deals; new ratings used

By Paul Thomasch

NEW YORK, June 20 (Reuters) - The major U.S. TV networks, after a slow start to the annual advertising negotiating season, have completed most of the prime-time commercial deals at prices above a year ago, executives said on Wednesday.

Behind the delay in negotiations was confusion over which audience ratings to use when writing more than $9 billion in deals for advertising time in the 2007-08 TV season.

Although volume was down in some cases, prices were up across the board by an average of between 5 percent and 9 percent based on cost per thousand viewers, media executives said.

While measurement standards have changed, by comparison, prices last year were up by only low single digit percentages.

In the past, negotiations were based on the size of a TV program's audience. The spread of digital video recorders, however, prompted the industry to search out new measures since audiences can now fast forward through commercials.

Nielsen Media Research responded by introducing ratings that track how much of the audience is watching the commercials of any given program.

Media executives said that the majority of deals for this year's upfront -- the period when networks sell about 80 percent of their prime-time advertising inventory -- were based on the Nielsen commercial ratings known as live plus three.