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There’s a storm coming — and it’s headed straight for Madison Avenue.
As the ratings roll in for the first few weeks of the fall TV season, the television landscape is getting battered by double-digit ratings declines that could leave the networks on the hook for millions in “make goods,” or free commercials to make up for lost ratings.
Already ad buyers are scrambling to recast their fourth-quarter projections as three of the four major broadcast networks — CBS, ABC and Fox — fall short of their guarantees to advertisers. NBC, which has been last in the ratings race for years, is the only network that is up so far.
Even ratings leader CBS, long praised for its stability, is down 11 percent in total viewers during the first four weeks of the season. Fox is the worst hit, down 25 percent, while ABC is off 8 percent. (News Corp. owns The Post and Fox.)
NBC, part of cable giant Comcast, is up 12 percent — but only after languishing in fourth place for a decade.
“To see it down so early is not a good thing,” said Marc Morse, senior vice president of national broadcast at ad shop RJ Palmer. “If they’re 5 percent down then you project out the rest of the quarter and bring [ratings points] down by that amount.”
Indeed, combined live ratings for the four major networks are down in the mid-teens for the first three weeks, compared with the networks’ own audience guarantees that they would be down by about 5 percent.
While no one knows for sure what has caused the broadcasters to stumble out of the gate, there’s plenty of speculation.
One network executive cited three presidential debates and competition from the NFL Network’s new night of football on Thursdays for the ratings hit.
Others have a good old-fashioned explanation: a mediocre crop of new shows. With the exception of NBC’s sci-fi drama “Revolution,” little has excited viewers.
Analysts also point to big increases in DVR and video-on-demand usage, along with massive growth in online video viewing for siphoning off young viewers and pushing up the average age of network viewers.
“There’s been a significant fall off in 18-49 year olds,” said Horizon Media research chief Brad Adgate. “Some of these numbers are pretty stark. We’re seeing a real graying of broadcast TV.”
Fox, which tends to skew younger than the other networks, says it is seeing a 10 percent lift in VOD usage.
Meanwhile, Wall Street is also crunching the numbers trying to assess the impact.
The ratings concerns have weighed on CBS, which houses the flagship network, sending the stock down 7.6 percent in the past four weeks.
Ben Swinburne, media analyst at Morgan Stanley, lowered CBS’s 2013 per-share earnings by 3 cents this week.
“Our forecast represents a down 10 percent to 15 percent ratings season” for the Big Four networks, he wrote.
Outside of the heated political season that boosts local TV stations, Morse described the current national ad market as “mild.”