Turner's David Levy Exposes the Lunacy of the Upfront

(MoneyWatch)  Perfectly timed to coincide with tax season, Turner Entertainment exec David Levy is campaigning to get media buyers to rally around repealing what he calls "a legacy tax" -- but what is really the premium advertisers pay to advertise on broadcast TV, even though nobody watches it anymore. The story, part of AdweekMedia's extensive package on the TV upfront, contains some great factoids from Levy on just how warped TV ad pricing is:

• So far this season, per Nielsen, broadcast totals 40 percent of prime-time viewership; it got 69 percent of the TV ad pie.
• Using Nielsen AdViews data, Tuner calculated that the cost-per-thousand (CPM) for "Seinfeld" during its last season was $35.39, while "Boomtown", which never had much of an audience, had a $38.85 CPM six years later.
• Also according to Turner analysis, NBC got $51.06 CPM for "Lipstick Jungle", a show that got barely more than 4 million viewers per episode, on average. TNT's "The Closer", which got about 7.8 million viewers last season, could only achieve a $29 CPM.

There is much logic to Levy's pitch; the problem is that TV ad buying is increasingly illogical, which is made painfully clear, yet again, in some of the quotes attributed to media execs in the story. Says one unidentified "national TV buyer":

"Cable offers a nice complement to broadcast. But the fact that Turner's making the argument about bringing pricing down is a little ironic. They've already priced themselves pretty high with their originals."

Let me get this straight: it's still considered "pretty high" for TNT to charge 46 percent less for "The Closer" than NBC did for "Lipstick Jungle" even though "The Closer"'s average audience is 49 percent higher? Of course that makes no sense, especially when one considers that much of the 18-49 audience advertisers so covet doesn't even realize that Fox is a network-come-lately, let alone that there's a cable-vs.-network divide. Anyone who wants to explain this to me, please feel free to comment. Otherwise, go about your flawed business.