The bad economy doesn’t mean the upfront TV advertising market will collapse, TelevisionWeek quotes NBC Universal boss Ben Silverman as saying. “If you’re going to get out of a recession, you need to sell stuff,” the co-chairman at NBC Entertainment and NBC Universal Television Studio said. “I think it will be a slow (upfront) process to come together. It will take a little longer. And some people may wait for scatter.” Mr. Silverman also said he and other NBC executives have recently been talking to representatives for the major U.S. automakers about ways to help them use network TV to pull themselves out of their slump. “When they start coming back, they’re going to need to rebrand,” he said. “We’re talking to them about that. … About building off some of the relationships we have.”
—Greg Baumann