Marketers Welcome Television’s Shift to a 52-Week Season

After the writers' strike was settled in February, television broadcasters resolved to rethink how the coming upfront week would proceed. The networks are ordering far fewer pilots, test episodes of new series that are expensive to produce. They also intend to broaden the presentations beyond what will be on TV, to include programming in new media like the Internet and mobile devices. And the networks will expand their horizon from the usual nine-month season — running September through May, with most new series brought out en masse in the fall — to a year-round perspective, known in industry parlance as a 52-week season. The senior executives at media agencies who help marketers determine which shows to buy commercials in — and which to avoid — welcome the changes. They say they would like the revamped upfront week to become normal, rather than entering the record books with an asterisk: temporary changes because of a strike-battered season.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/12/business/media/12adcol.html?ref=todayspaper
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