Life: X,Y and C

I heard it plenty of times growing up, from parents, teachers, anybody who expected me to do something not just talk about it--talk is cheap.  Well, this morning, the ad rates for the new Katie Couric talk show were released.  You want to make a boat load of money, be a successful talk show host.

An article in this morning's New York Post says that ABC/Disney is looking for $50 thousand dollars for a :30 second commercial on the new show debuting in the Fall of 2012.  Assuming there are no discount deals for :60 second spots and they run 6 minutes of spots per show, that is 600 thousand in revenue per DAY, over 200 shows a season, that translates to $120 MILLION a year.   Figuring an annual budget of $40 million a year (a million a week for a 40 week season, considerably less than an hour long soap in that time slot), that leaves $80 million in the pockets of ABC/Disney, Katie Couric and her producing partner, Jeff Zucker.   Not too bad.

By comparison, another ABC produced, nationally syndicated program, Live with Regis and Kelly, commands around 40k for a :30 second spot, pulling in about $96 MILLION per year in revenues.

Oh and just because I know you are wondering, The Oprah Winfrey Show pulled in, on average, 100k for a 30 second spot, yep, $240 million dollars.  The show also charged stations license fees to run the show.   Some large market stations were paying 250k a week just for license fees by the time the Oprah show ended this spring.  Now do you understand how Oprah became a billionaire?

Katie will have the advantage of being on at 3pm in the largest markets in the country as ABC plans to give the time slot back to local stations across the country (Bye Bye General Hospital?) and she will be live from NY every day allowing her to be topical and current, leading into the former Oprah stations that are doing local news at 4pm.

Katie will have the additional advantage of all the ABC/Disney cable platforms to promote her show and, possibly, have a repeat run.  7pm on Lifetime, perhaps?  ABC also created a digital broadcast channel, Live Well, that stations run on their .2 broadcast signals.    While the channel has been generally well received and has decent ratings, it lacks a marque brand, perhaps that will be a delayed broadcast of the Katie show, on tape, a week later.   Not to mention the potential web revenues.

Time will tell if Katie will be a multi-platform success or just another would be Oprah/Ellen/Rosie who despite considerable talents couldn't quite make it work.  Starting at 50 thousand for a :30 second spot, she better make it work, and fast.