Competitive Info: For TV, The Declines Keep On Coming.

The latest revised forecast for Brian Wieser’s Madison and Wall has more bad news for national broadcast television. The outlook says TV ad spending, including national and local linear, plus CTV and streaming, will fall 2.1% this year, excluding political.

Madison and Wall says the decline will be offset slightly by Olympics coverage spending hosted by NBCUniversal, with a 3.7% increase in TV ad revenue predicted for the third quarter. But that could mean an even larger comparative decline in 2025, when Wieser predicts TV ad spending to fall 4.1%.

Local TV, however, will get a big boost from political this year. It’s expected to grow 26.9% this year, with political ad spending representing 28% of all local TV advertising in 2024 — vs. 4.2% during 2023.