The Writers Guild of America (WGA) went on strike in May, putting latest scripted episodes of shows on hold until they get a greater deal. How bad is that this for TV ad revenue? Ad revenue is already slipping from talk shows, soap operas and sitcoms, a category that makes up 9% of the $26 billion in TV ads overall, in keeping with a study taken in June, before the actors’ union SAG-AFTRA went on strike, by ad sales intelligence company Media Radar.
Here’s a have a look at what the study found.
Scripted TV down. Talk shows, soap operas and sitcoms took in 9%, or $2.36 billion, of $26 billion in TV ad revenue in the primary half of 2023. Sales for these shows are down 5% in comparison with H1 2022.
Because ad slots are sometimes bought several months upfront, the total brunt of the WGA strike remains to be to come back.
Primetime programming. Primetime TV programming saw a considerable 15% drop this yr, from $13.1 billion in H1 ‘22 all the way down to $11.2 billion in H1 ‘23.
TV talk shows were down 1% in ad spend over the identical period.
“Lucrative late-night talk shows specifically have been off the air already for a pair months,” said MediaRadar CEO Todd Krizelman, in a release. “Soon, fall programming, including talk shows, soap operas and primetime sitcoms should air. However, that’s prone to be delayed since they depend on writers through the summer for scripts.”
Dig deeper: 4 tricks to get essentially the most out of CTV promoting
Bad timing. Some scripted shows were gaining in ad revenue up until the strike.
For instance, ads for soap operas rose 17% YoY — from $101.5 million in H1 ‘22 to $118.6 million this yr.
Also, sitcoms were up 16%, earning $2.2 billion in H1 2023, up from $1.9 billion last yr.
Why we care. This study was based on each traditional and digital channels. This yr, digital ad spend is roughly three-quarters of overall spend. And CTV is, on average, 10% of digital, and rapidly climbing.
Although streaming services open up the vault to old episodes (on traditional TV, they’re called reruns), digital TV does have latest hits for “appointment viewing” — like Max’s recently concluded “Succession” — they usually’re all on hold.
So for the summer, TV ad revenue is at a standstill. Expect the actual impact of the WGA strike to hit this fall.
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