Cable TV and Madison Avenue appear to have lost that loving feeling.
Upfront ad dollars targeted to cable TV appear headed for a decline for the 2014-15 season, cable groups and insiders are whispering.
If the downward trend continues — and some big players still have a few weeks to book ads — it would mark the first upfront ad sales drop for cable not caused by the recession or dot-com bust.
While not large — some believe it could dip about 3 percent — the upfront ad sales decline stands in stark contrast to the 16 percent and 19 percent gains achieved three and four years ago, respectively.
To be sure, with NBCUniversal, MTV Networks, Discovery Communications, Turner Broadcasting and A&E Networks still selling, the trend could change.
Last year, cable ad sales during the upfront were $10.2 billion, a growth of 4.3 percent, according to the Cable TV Ad Bureau, the industry association that tallies numbers in September — that was less than a 5 percent gain in 2012-13.
The last time cable saw a drop off was in 2009 at the height of the financial crisis. Back then the Cable TV Ad Bureau reported a 13 percent drop to $6.7 billion. But since that anomaly, cable has experienced a half-decade of record upfront growth, partly because it’s cheaper than broadcast TV and also because the programming has improved.
“It was a down story for the first time in years,” one major player said of the almost concluded 2014-15 upfronts. “The big networks are surprised by the volume — it’s lackluster.”
Of course that doesn’t mean disaster is at hand. Top industry executives believe that advertisers will simply spend in the year-round scatter market instead.
“There doesn’t look like a lot of new products. The car launches should be bigger,” said one senior upfront exec.
Meanwhile, AMC Networks has been commanding huge increases in the final episodes of “Mad Men,” rolling out in 2015. A source told The Post that AMC got a 10 percent rise in the cost of reaching a thousand viewers. Reps declined comment.