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“Theaters and
theme parks are
most vulnerable.”due to coronavirus even before mak-
ing its programming free for an indef-
inite time “to help families out.”
The coronavirus has also been good
for TV news. The week after President
Trump declared a national emergency,
CNN tripled its primetime audience
in the industry’s most important
demographic, ages 25–54, while
MSNBC was up 56 percent. Fox News,
still the most-watched of the three,
posted an 89 percent climb, according
to Nielsen Media Research.
Overall television advertising, how-
ever, is expected to take a hit, espe-
cially since major sporting events
like the NCAA’s men’s basketball
tournament have been delayed or
canceled. NBCUniveral had expected
to sell more than $1.2 billion in ads for
the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, which
have been postponed until next year.
Advertising giant GroupM pre-
dicted back in December that the U.S.
advertising market, which includes TV,
digital, radio and more, would rise 4percent in 2020 to about $254 billion.
Now, however, Brian Wieser, the firm’s
global president of business intelli-
gence, says it’s “woefully optimistic” to
rely on any pre-coronavirus economic
forecasts. “The numbers will be lower,
it’s just a matter of by how much,” he
says. And some analysts worry that
those lower numbers could become
the new normal. On March 23, Doug
Creutz of Cowen shaved an average
of 20 percent from his earnings esti-
mates for more than a half-dozen
companies through 2022 because
Creutz believes a coronavirus-sparked
recession will represent “a permanent
step-down in TV advertising.”