The NABS Media Ad Auction is just around the corner, and this year’s sell-off boasts better quality inventory, fewer restrictions and a usage time limit pumped up to a full year.
The theme of the12th annual NABS auction, which launches Feb. 17 and runs until April 26, is ‘We’ve made it easy to buy great media’ says Mike Fenton, president and CEO of the National Advertising Benevolent Society (NABS).
NABS has also launched a new Web site – developed by its pro-bono agency FCB – to allow online registration and bidding.
The event is designed to raise money for NABS by auctioning off inventory worth $2 million (with rates starting at 50% off the regular rate-card value) for all media, including radio, TV, out-of-home and newspapers. Some of the participating companies include CanWest Global Communications, Rogers Media, Viacom Outdoor and CBC Television.
NABS is a charitable organization that provides assistance to media and communications professionals in need of help due to illness, unemployment or other problems. The organization raised $500,000 in last year’s auction, but hopes to get that figure back up to the 2001 auction level of about $650,000 this year.
Fox jumps the gun
Fox has been known to buck tradition, and now they’ve done it with their summer sked.
At the semi-annual meeting of Television Critics Association press tour, Fox Entertainment president Gail Berman announced that the net would launch some of its new shows – originally slated for the fall – in the summer, a season when many networks show repeats.
Fox Entertainment chairman Sandy Grushow noted that summer is an ideal time for premiering new shows, a lesson learned with the success of last summer’s American Idol: A Search for a Superstar.
The net plans to air scripted comedies and dramas and reality-based shows in July and August and will then premiere new episodes of staple series like 24 and Malcolm in the Middle in the fall. There are no details yet as to which shows have been given the greenlight for summer debuts, but some are likely to be pilots that remain at that stage.
