During commercial breaks in prime time, there’s at least one commercial for a local business per break. How do these get aired?
I must admit I have no idea how national commercials get aired let alone local ones. Here’s how, in my little brain, I assume it all works: National commercials are broadcasted from, er, the mothership. The mothership allows thirty seconds or so per break for local commercials. At the local TV station, commercials are queued and ready to air during the allotted slot.
Is that about how it works? How much do these local businesses pay for airtime? Surely it’s not as much as, say, Sony pays for a commercial during E.R., right? Also, what about markets that have local business that can’t afford to advertise during prime time?
You’re basically right: The network feeds have slots where local stations can air local ads.
The price for these varies by market. If the local station can’t sell a particular slot, a public service announcement (“This is your brain on drugs”) airs from the network feed.
Like RealityChuck said, the price varies by market, and by station within a market. The price that a station charges is determined by the Nielsen ratings, which is why you see all kinds of outrageous, attention-grabbing programs during “sweeps weeks” when the ratings are compiled. The station with the #1 ranking during a time slot can charge more for commercials than the station with a #5 ranking in the same slot.
Of course, it also goes without saying that a local spot in prime time will cost more than one at 3 AM.
My guess is similar to JuanitaTech’s. But it seems to me that there are three different levels.
Some commercials are national; they can be identified by the “price may vary in Hawaii” (as if there’s even the slightest chance the price might not vary in Hawaii?). Those are sold by the network.
Some are regional. For example, your’e not going to see a commercial for Hellman’s mayo in LA (nor one for Best Foods’ mayo in NY). Those are sold by the franchise, i.e., the individual broadcasting station.
But others are for really tiny local businesses. Like for a specific restaurant, as opposed to a whole chain. (They are also identifiable by the horrendously amateurish acting.) My guess is that these are sold by the cable company, and won’t be seen outside that particular town, or even in that town by people who are watching via satellite or rabbit ears (antenna).
I’ve long wondered if the above guesses have any basis in reality. And if they do, I suppose there must be some sort of agreement between the cable company and the broadcasters, because those local ads will knock out some of the regional and national ads. The agreements would surely include specific blocks of time, and (I suppose) some money too.
I forgot to add, because so few people will actually see the ads put on by the cable company, they will charge far less than the local broadcaster would. And the restaurant benefits because they don’t have to waste money sending their message to people ten towns away.
Keeve, you are partly right, except that as far as the TV staion is concerned, all spots are either national or local. The national spots are produced and carried as part of the national network feed, along with the programs.
The local spots are sold by the station (or by agencies representing the station). The local spots are aired in times not reserved by the network for national spots.
However, many times national or regional advertisers will by “local” spots because they are cheaper and they can target a specific audience. Sometimes a group of merchants will pool their money to buy an ad for a product they all sell. You’ve seen the “tags” at the end of the ad that say “buy this now at K-Mart, Costco or Walgreen’s,” or the Ford ads that say “see your Metro Area Ford dealers.”
Cable, as you noted is a similar story. Many of the non-premium cable channels have time slots reserved for the local cable operator to sell, just like local TV stations. The cable companies will never pre-empt the commercials from the local broadcast channels, since this would be in violation of their agreements.
This is true. But FTR, all commercial broadcasters (TV, Radio) are required to air a certain amount of public service announcements, with various restrictions on how they must do this, etc. (i.e. I don’t think it’s permissible for them to air all of them at like 2am before they sign off)
That being said, they do seem to have a great amount of latitude so they can air their PSAs during less than popular timeslots; I don’t recall ever seeing a PSA during the Super Bowl…
I very briefly worked a temp job with a local station in LA.
IIRC, part of big network programming contracts entail offering local affiliates some ad time space during the program.
As and\ example:
“My Favorite Sitcom” is actually only 22 minutes longs.
that leaves 8 minutes for commercials.
7 or 71/2 minutes is probably sold by the Big Network, but they might allow 1 minute, or 30 seconds to be sold locally.
Your local network works out a deal with Chuck’s Crap Cars and he buys 50 commercials at 15 seconds each. Most of those will be shown around Oprah, the local news broadcast and late night. But to sweeten the deal, they promise him 4 spots of 15 seconds in Prime Time. This allows the local network to charge more, and Chuck is thrilled that a large local audience will at least see his commercial 4 times.
Strange, Hellman’s mayo is available at almost every larger supermarket here.
[{hijack]
Back to the OP. Yes, you’re right. That’s basically how it’s done. But it’s a lot more complex as to the “why?” and “How much?” You’d think that prime time is more expensive, but ratings, share, demographics, frequency and many other things paly into it. Your local supermarket might have made a deal with Pepsico. So the ad for this week’s specials on sale, will feature Pepsi. And they pick up a large part of the bill. Or you’ll see commercials for Maybeline around Oprah, but not BayWatch. Or, as Dmark wrote, it’s all part of a package.
Remember, it was not too long ago that networks int the U.S. could only own five stations. The rest were affiliates. These independant stations also had deals about nationally sold spots. The affiliate will pay the major network a fee to get the feed. But for spots sold nationally, the local station would in turn bill the big network for that time. A lot of this is still going on of course. As I understand it, a lot of stations have not been bought up (yet) by the major networks, so in fact they controll what goes out and when.
These spaces for local spots are called “local avails.” And Fat Bald Guy is right-- to a TV station, all ads are either national or local. Hence, stations have both a local and a national sales staff. Those spots that could be called ‘regional’ are actually just local buys made in a number of different markets.
The deal The Gaspode referred to where PepsiCo (or whomever) might help pay for local advertising is pretty much right-- it is known as “co-op.” But they are still local, NOT national buys (even though PepsiCo is multi-national) made by the little guy with financial help from the big guy.
And, Juanita Tech, you are right. A local spot doesn’t cost nearly what a national spot appearing at the same time costs. Basically you pay according to the number of eye-balls you reach. During prime time, SONY may be reaching 50 million households in a national spot, but a local spot for “Joe’s Local Yokel’s” appearing in the same break as the SONY spot only reaches 500,000 households, so it costs proportionately less.