Universal McCann senior vice president and director of forecasting Robert
Coen is projecting that advertisers will spend nearly $11.5 billion on network
cable by the end of this year, down 3.5 percent from 2001.
He observed that he had expected network cable to be up this year. Instead,
he said, 'Cable we now see in hindsight is vulnerable.'
The 'Big Four' broadcast-television networks, meanwhile, should post a 7
percent gain in ad spending to $15.3 billion this year, Coen added.
In other TV sectors, he felt that spot TV would grow 7.5 percent to $9.9
billion and syndication would inch up 0.5 percent to $3.1 billion. But even with
the broadcast giants, he warned, this is 'assuming the upfront holds,' without
options being exercised in the months to come.
Coen unveiled his latest projections for ad spending in 2002 during a
Wednesday-morning briefing for investment analysts and the press at the
University Club in New York.
All told, Coen projected, the major measured media targeting consumers
(including radio, magazines and newspapers) should grow 2.6 percent to just over
$61.4 billion in 2002.
On the local front, he is looking for total ad spending in local media to
grow 2.4 percent to $91.7 billion -- including a 5 percent increase by local TV
to $12.9 billion. He did not break out a spending estimate for local cable.
Combining all ad spending -- local and national (including direct mail,
Yellow Pages and the Internet, not counted in his consumer-oriented spending
breakout) -- Coen put total U.S. ad spending at $236.2 billion for 2002, up a
'modest' 2.1 percent.
That projection was down from the 2.4 percent he offered last December, he
explained, because the sluggish turnaround in ad spending calls for being
cautious.
