More Bad News For TV Stations: Low NFL Attendance

NFL teams in Minnesota, San Diego, Jacksonville, Oakland, San Francisco, Detroit, St. Louis and Cincinnati may not sell out their home stadium tickets, all due to the suffering economy. That could mean blackouts of local TV coverage and the loss of advertising during those games. The double whammy for TV stations comes from massive hits to their automotive and financial advertising, which also happen to be two of the biggest sports and NFL TV advertising categories. While automotive has been cutting back, many domestic and import brands continue to buy TV sports, still hoping to target their core male consumers. Now a bunch of TV stations won't even get a handful of valuable NFL home games to sell to those advertisers -- usually at very high advertising rates.