Nielsen released first quarter numbers and they are just as horrid as you’d expect.
Overall U.S. advertising expenditures fell 12 percent to $27.9 billion in Q1, compared to the first three months of 2008
Three of the worst ad performers came from the beleaguered newspaper business
Network TV was the largest media category with $5.76 billion in ad expenditures in the first quarter, but it declined 4.8 percent
Local TV was particularly shaken up in the quarter, as spot TV for the 210 DMAs dropped 16.6 percent to $5.55 billion
Spot TV in the top 100 markets fell 15.6 percent to $5.2 billion
Syndicated TV was hit the hardest, off 18.8 percent to $586.4 million
However, it’s nice to see that marketers are not abandoning their dedicated efforts. I think kudos must go out to those hard-working agency who defended their budgets so well.
One bright spot in the TV universe was African-American television (a subset of network, cable, syndicated and local), which grew 7.9 percent to $170.2 million.
While representing a relatively tiny subset of the media landscape, Spanish-language cable TV showed the smallest decline overall, dropping 1.1 percent to $63.9 million.
On a percentile basis, the biggest gainer in the quarter was direct-response marketing, which grew 14.1 percent to $583.4 million.
Born Curious 
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