Call It the Glamour Bowl

ABC and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are pitching Sunday night’s tribute to the diminutive but powerful Oscar as the Super Bowl for women. Advertisers, including half a dozen big companies that have paid premiums for exclusive rights in their categories, say that is an apt description.

The two events consistently are the nation’s most-watched television shows. The Super Bowl draws the largest male audience, while the Academy Awards regularly attracts more women than any other program. Fox charged $1.6 million for a 30-second spot during the 1999 Super Bowl, and ABC, a unit of Walt Disney Co., topped $1 million for the first time selling 30-second Oscar spots for Sunday’s broadcast.

Revlon, American Express, Gap and Merrill Lynch are among the dozen or so major advertisers that will use the annual tribute to cinema to pitch their wares. And PepsiCo Inc. will unveil a “Joy of Cola” ad campaign that the company hopes will turn Pepsi into the nation’s fastest-growing cola.

The lengthy broadcast, which is switching telecast nights in a bid to bolster ratings, has evolved into a solid platform for new advertising campaigns. But industry observers say the Oscars haven’t seriously challenged the Super Bowl as Madison Avenue’s prime showcase.

Andy Friedenberg, for example, uses commercial breaks to award prizes during Oscar parties that his film society hosts at a San Diego sports bar. When Hollywood’s stars are ready to shine, Friedenberg said, “we stop talking in the middle of the sentence and turn the sound back up” on the bar’s 34 TV sets.

But with its unique blend of Hollywood glamour and entertainment, advertising industry observers say, the Academy Awards is solidly positioned to steal more of the Super Bowl’s commercial thunder.

“They should be doing a better job of building it into an advertising event,” said Joe Mandese, editor of the Myers Report, a New York-based TV industry newsletter. “The Academy Awards already have some great advertising running. And, other than the Super Bowl, there aren’t many shows where viewers sit back and think about the advertising going into it.”

Oscar can’t run, pass or punt, but the awards show’s formula blocks the one-sided games that the Super Bowl too often produces. Advertisers say most viewers stay glued to their sets because the biggest stars don’t come out until the event’s waning moments. The Academy Awards show also tends to cross gender and age gaps better than many competitors in the ratings race.

“With the Super Bowl, you only have two teams to root for,” said Marv Goldsmith, president of sales and marketing for ABC. “But with the Oscars, everyone has their favorite movie, their favorite actors and they can see what everyone’s wearing. This is a program that truly reaches people at all kinds of different levels.”

Last year’s show drew record numbers of women and young adults, said Jon Mandel, co-managing director of MediaCom, a New York-based media company owned by Grey Advertising. Mandel added that Academy Awards programs are “as much about celebrities and fashion as they are about awards. . . . [People] tuned in to see what has emerged as the celebrity fashion show of the year.”

Although last year’s show was watched by 61% of the nation’s women, MediaCom reports that the Oscars telecast also enjoyed a healthy jump among hard-to-reach consumers between the ages of 18 and 24 while also managing to draw a hefty number of male viewers.

That diverse audience, when coupled with the show’s powerful blend of cinema, fashion and celebrity, “is a great fit for us,” said Dawn Hudson, senior vice president of strategy and marketing for Pepsi-Cola North America.

“What’s most important is that viewers come together as a family to watch it,” Hudson said.

Pepsi, which helped transform the Super Bowl into an ad fest but didn’t advertise its flagship brand in the game this year, isn’t abandoning the football championship for the Oscars.

“It was a question of timing,” Hudson said, “and the timing makes sense.” Pepsi’s new commercials, featuring a new jingle sung by Aretha Franklin, weren’t going to be ready until March, so when it became apparent that the awards show was available, Pepsi jumped. “This is the second-highest-rated television show and we have a strong history of using high-profile events,” Hudson said.

Pepsi is betting that the broadcast will firmly establish the “Joy of Cola” jingle in consumers’ minds and position Pepsi for a massive “Star Wars” promotion that will peak just before the important summer season.

Just as NFL star John Elway performs better with a solid backfield, Oscar excels when he has a strong supporting cast. Viewership soars during years when such box-office favorites as “Godfather II,” “Kramer vs. Kramer” and “Forrest Gump” are up for best-picture honors. Ratings don’t reach such heights when such independent productions as “The English Patient” lead the nominating list.

Last year’s awards show set records on the strength of viewer interest in the wildly popular “Titanic.” The total number of viewers soared to 55.2 million and the cost of a 30-second commercial hit $915,000, a record for the broadcast. The increases followed two years of declining ratings.

The “Titanic” effect will make it difficult for ABC to top last year’s record viewership level. The switch to Sunday after a decade of Monday night broadcasts could make it easier for ABC to snare more West Coast viewers and retain Easterners who might be more likely to retire after a day at work.

“We felt that we’re forever running over on this show, so hopefully with the switch we can maybe get off before midnight on the East Coast,” said ABC’s Goldsmith. “And on Sunday night, there are a higher number of sets in use, so there will be more folks available to watch. It will be interesting to see if we can raise the size of an audience already geared toward monumental proportions.”

In addition to the 60 spots ABC has sold during the show, the network has sold a dozen 30-second spots during an Oscar preview show airing Sunday.

Networks like the stability that such shows as the Super Bowl and the Oscars bring because they usually know upfront what the ad market will bear. That’s not the case when celebrities such as Michael Jordan share their secrets during interviews or viewers tune in to news specials tied to developments such as the Gulf War.

That’s why ABC recently renewed its exclusive rights to the awards broadcast through 2008. It also agreed to limit its inventory of commercials to 10 minutes per hour, according to the Myers Report, to ensure that viewers aren’t put off by too many interruptions in an already-lengthy show.

“The Oscars is one of the few TV events that can command a rate card,” Mandese said. “It’s got a built-in following of advertisers, so the network can pretty much dictate its terms. But something like a Lewinsky interview or news event is unpredictable because you can’t be sure of the ratings upfront.”

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Titanic Aspirations?

“Titanic” mania pushed TV ratings for last year’s Academy Awards broadcast to a record high. This year, the ceremony is shifting to Sunday night from Monday in a bid to raise viewership. ABC has broadcast the awards program since 1976.

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Number of viewers Best Year Rating* Share* (in millions) picture 1988 29.4 49% 42.2 “The Last Emperor” 1989 29.8 50 42.6 “Rain Man” 1990 27.9 48 40.3 “Driving Miss Daisy” 1991 28.4 46 42.7 “Dances With Wolves” 1992 29.8 50 44.4 “The Silence of the Lambs” 1993 31.2 51 45.7 “Unforgiven” 1994 31.3 49 45.1 “Schindler’s List” 1995 32.5 53 48.3 “Forrest Gump” 1996 30.3 50 44.8 “Braveheart” 1997 27.4 46 30.5 “The English Patient” 1998 34.9 55 55.2 “Titanic”

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* The rating is the estimated size of the audience compared with the universe of available viewers, expressed as a percentage. The share is the percentage of actual viewers tuned to a specific program.

Source: Nielsen Media Research

Time and Money

The last episode of “Seinfeld,” broadcast in May 1998, was one of the few programs to surpass the Super Bowl as the most expensive 30-second buy on television. However, analysts say network claims for rates are often exaggerated. Prices for a 30-second spot, according to industry sources and published reports:

* Final “Seinfeld”: $2 million

* 1999 Super Bowl: $1.6 million

* 1999 Academy Awards: $1 million

* 1999 Barbara Walters interview of Monica Lewinsky on “20/20”: $800,000