TV Networks Now Wait for Word From Sponsors

A bedazzled Dolly Parton sang at NBC’s presentation, accompanied on the piano by Bob Greenblatt, the chairman of NBC Entertainment. The comedian Jimmy Kimmel held his baby daughter onstage at ABC’s event. John Travolta, Ricky Martin, Joe Namath and Stephen Colbert were some of the other celebrities who made appearances. Among the 168 members of on-air talent at NBCUniversal’s cable upfront, the company said, were 18 “Real Housewives.” There were parties in Central Park and at Lincoln Center, with open bars and tables of sushi and sliders.

Television networks entered the annual upfront presentations last week determined to impress marketers with their lineups of shows for the coming season and stanch the potential flow of ad dollars to digital media. Broadcast and cable networks held elaborate events and parties across Manhattan in the hopes of attracting tens of billions of dollars from advertisers.

Now come the negotiations, when advertisers will judge whether the offerings from the television networks seem as exciting as their presentations. If things go well, TV networks will sell as much as 75 percent of their advertising time in the negotiations. If they do not, the thrum of trepidation about television’s place on advertising budgets will grow louder.

“The overall takeaway is there’s a lot of content being developed for an awful lot of platforms,” said David Cohen, the chief investment officer at UM, part of the Interpublic Group. “Everyone is feeling the heat and the pressure around the changing market dynamics.”

In the coming weeks, advertisers will evaluate a wide range of data to gauge which shows are likely to be breakout hits and help determine where they should place their ad dollars.

Social media, for instance, provides a window into which new shows are generating the greatest amount of early interest. On Twitter, those that brought the most chatter for each broadcast network were ABC’s reimagination of “The Muppets”; “Supergirl,” about Superman’s cousin, on CBS; Fox’s “Scream Queens,” about a killer at a sorority house; and “Heroes Reborn” on NBC, a spinoff of the popular show “Heroes.”

TV Guide also has a history of predicting the successes and failures based on the number of times a show has been added to the more than three million “watchlists” users create on the publication’s website. Based on that data, the top new dramas are “Supergirl” and “Heroes Reborn,” and the top new comedies are “The Grinder” on Fox, starring Rob Lowe and Fred Savage, and “The Muppets.”

The lowest-ranking shows were the CW’s musical “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” and NBC’s live variety show “Best Time Ever With Neil Patrick Harris.”

Marketers said standout new shows from the week included NBC’s “Blindspot,” a one-hour drama about a woman discovered in Times Square, with the only clues to her identity being her mysterious tattoos. “Quantico,” a political thriller from ABC, also generated excitement. And while much noise was made about “The Muppets,” the response from advertisers ended up, ad executives said, falling somewhere between nostalgic appreciation and downright confusion.

Apocalyptic dramas, medical procedurals and shows about superheroes dominated the presentations, while half-hour comedies and reality series were largely lacking. Some executives highlighted a new comedy from ABC called “Dr. Ken” and “The Grinder” as potential hits.

Networks are also bringing back or remaking old series and movies, to mixed reviews from ad executives. In addition to “Heroes Reborn,” NBC also introduced a sequel to the comedy series “Coach,” which will again star Craig T. Nelson. ABC will have a series called “Uncle Buck,” based on the movie of the same name, and Fox is bringing back “The X-Files.”

“I like the reimagining of it,” Melissa Shapiro, president of investment at MediaVest USA, said of the revivals. “If you just bring it back, I’m not sure it’s necessarily going to resonate.”

The total amount of money advertisers commit during the upfront season this year is expected to decline 7 percent, according to Magna Global, an ad-buying group owned by the Interpublic Group.

That reflects a 10 percent decline in spending for broadcast networks and a 5 percent drop for cable networks.

To combat the pull of digital media, television networks emphasized the premium quality of their programs and the medium’s ability to reach broad audiences. They introduced new data tools and poked fun at whether people actually saw online ads. Above all, they showed clips of shows, both new and old, during well-rehearsed presentations often punctuated by visits from top television talent.

Christopher Geraci, president of national broadcast at Omnicom’s OMD media planning and buying group, said the networks “were all pretty much on their A game this year.”

“The takeaway that I have — and that certainly a number of clients through the week shared with me — was that most of what was presented reminded them of the fact that TV was still show business,” he said.