Looking to enhance telecast flow, the National Football League is talking with its broadcast partners about a limited deployment of double-box presentation of commercials during the 2017 campaign.
CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus, in an interview at NFL Media Day at CBS Corp. headquarters in New York on Aug. 30, said the league’s broadcast partners are in discussions about occasionally going to a "two-box" format, in which game content would appear on half the screen, flanked by a commercial. McManus said "you might see that periodically" this season.
He said such a format might pertain to a time-out situation, when a replay challenge is in progress, or during the time between kicking an extra point and the ensuing kickoff, or between a kickoff and the first play from scrimmage.
McManus said that could happen two or three times per telecast and "when done the right way, advertisers could get real good value from that."
Such an ad format gambit would become part of a commercial revamp the league and the networks are putting in play this season, following the 2016 campaign that saw the average regular-season telecast audience decline 8% to 16.5 million viewers from 17.9 million the prior year. Much of the downturn was attributed to consumer interest in the historic presidential election cycle, as well as blowouts in some key windows and the absence of star players.
The league is also looking to improve its pace of play to keep viewers watching the games. To that end, McManus said the NFL is tweaking its commercial format, reducing the number of breaks from five to four in each period. However, each break would see the addition of a 30-second spot, extending a pod to 2:20 from 1:50.
McManus in his remarks at Media Day said that NFL viewers don’t notice the length of the break as much as their frequency. He noted that the CBS (US) and the other networks are "not losing commercial inventory" with the four breaks being longer than the length of the original pods.
John Bogusz, executive vice president, sports sales and marketing at CBS, in an interview at the event said there hasn’t been any recalcitrance from advertisers relative to having their ads run deeper within the longer pods.
Network promos also will be contained within the breaks. “We all know how much you love hearing [announcers] Jim Nantz and Greg Gumbel saying 'Tonight on Madame Secretary,'" McManus quipped.
McManus believes promo inclusion within the breaks will enhance telecast flow and is "real important to way the game is presented on television."
The most important change will involve kick scoring plays and the subsequent kickoff.
Bogusz said the NFL is looking to avoid the "double-up" – in which an extra point or field goal was followed by a commercial break and the kickoff by another set of spots. He said that revamped sequencing, now sans breaks, has been on display during preseason telecasts, and this is the "biggest change in the flow of games."
FOX (US) will also do its part to reduce clutter in NFL telecasts. 21st Century Fox Inc.'s Fox Networks Group will start using the six-second ad format across the FOX Sports portfolio, with the smaller units kicking off in FOX's "America's Game of the Week" on Sept. 10, the first week of the 2017 NFL regular season. FOX aired six-second spots on FOX's "TEEN CHOICE 2017" awards show earlier this month.
Bogusz said with last season's ratings decrease and some attrition in auto spending as new car sales have slowed in 2017, CBS is slightly behind in its NFL ad sales pace, when compared with last year. Spending is up in the insurance and packaged goods categories.
With Cialis and Viagra coming off patent and generic products available, ad sales in erectile dysfunction category have taken a hit. Jo Ann Ross, the company’s longtime ad sales chief, who was recently promoted to president and chief advertising revenue officer at CBS Corp., said that came as no surprise as some drugs gain approval from the Food and Drug Administration and often become part of the commercial pipeline, while others run their patent course and attendant spending ceases.
Ross, in looking at what’s in the advertising pipeline, believes that CBS will end up doing "fine" with the NFL. "There is a lot of interest in the NFL. We have to convert upfront holds to orders. There has been a lot of activity this week and we’ll see a lot more when we come back after Labor Day."