The TV Writer's Strike

We're nearing a perfect media storm for advertisers as viewers melt away from television, an ongoing process accelerated by the strike of television writers. What this means for companies that need TV ad time to market their products: higher ad prices, fewer ad positions available and greater difficulty in reaching a broad spectrum of customers with TV sales messages.

For holiday marketers who have not yet completed their ad buys, this media maelstrom could be particularly crippling during a season that some companies count on for a majority of their annual sales.

What are these advertisers to do? Move quickly and decisively into other proven media such as radio and newspapers that offer low production costs and short lead times for ad scheduling. The radio and newspaper media are in an advertising recession right now and can offer advertisers attractive ad rates and a platform from which to move seasonal merchandise quickly.

Is the internet also an option for these TV-deficient advertisers? Of course, but high reach on the internet is very expensive now and often hard to come by. Radio and newspapers, on the other hand, offer an opportunity to reach half or more of America in a morning.