Pursuing Advertisers With Big-Top Spectacle

This week, the biggest television networks will battle it out for their share of the more than $60 billion in advertising dollars spent by the world’s largest marketers on television commercials each year. The networks’ weapons? A 40-foot sushi bar, a 125-foot star-studded red carpet and 14 flavors of doughnuts (including candied ginger and hibiscus). What began in the 1960s as a glorified trade show for television executives to woo marketers and sell advertising time upfront to support the coming fall TV schedule has evolved into a full-fledged bacchanal that can cost networks upward of $1 million. Today the upfronts look more like Fashion Week than a business transaction.