CBS "has kicked off advertising sales of its new Thursday Night NFL franchise by signing luxury automaker Lexus as the sponsor of its halftime show," according to Jon Lafayette of BROADCASTING & CABLE. Lexus "had been the halftime show sponsor of Thursday Night Football on the NFL Network." Ad time in NFL games "generally begins to sell a bit before the primetime upfront negotiations in late May and early June." NFL Media Senior VP/Sales Brian Matthews: "A lot of advertisers are seeing the benefit of having CBS as a partner. The incumbents and the new advertisers are understanding the power of the combination of CBS and the NFL Network." Lafayette notes while it is "still early in the process, some of the NFL Network sponsors will not be coming back for the simulcasts." Among the "high-profile packages available to new advertisers are in the pregame programming and the game reset before the start of the second half." The companies "declined to say how much more it would cost to sponsor the games simulcast on CBS and the NFL Network than it cost last year to sponsor the NFL Network alone" (
BROADCASTINGCABLE.com, 5/4).
