Week-to-Week Pacing Changes

This week, Q3 Core pace climbed 1.8 points.

·       July grew by 2.2 points.

·       August picked up 1.4 points.

·       September added 1.9 points.

Every affiliation, region, and DMA group saw growth in July.

 Forecast Updates

We’re a week into third quarter, and while I feel better about the quarter than I did a few weeks ago, it’s still a challenging quarter to forecast. July keeps getting stronger, August is growing but still either very late or very weak, and September looks very strong.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I forecast by looking for patterns, asking myself, “How did prior months and years with similar conditions come in, and how can I apply those patterns to the current and future months I’m forecasting?” The conditions I consider include the existence of political and political displacement (or the lack thereof), the Olympics and other major sporting events, and the broadcast versus standard calendar.

I’ve generally considered 2023 a reference year for 2025, as both years have a similar lack of political displacement and special events like the Olympics. However, 2025 differs from 2023 in one significant way: 2023 had the most crossover broadcast days possible at the end/beginning of the quarter, with as many as 5 or 6 calendar days at the end of a quarter considered part of the next broadcast month, leading to significant timing issues in how those days are booked.

I knew this about 2023 and adjusted my 2025 estimates accordingly, but without many hard datapoints to determine those adjustments. However, today I decided to see what the 2019 patterns looked like, as that year also has similar political and special events conditions as 2025. But what makes 2019 a good comparison is that it had 0 to 1 crossover days in each quarter, closer to this year’s 1-2 days than we saw in 2023.

With 2019 in mind as a reference point, I looked at the billing patterns for the most recent past months this year and found some stability in the numbers that can help me better grasp the rest of 2025. Of particular note were the following: August 2019 came in later than prior years, while September came in earlier. This reinforces the patterns we’re seeing for Q3 2025: August has to be particularly late, while September is pacing to be much stronger.

Of course, other factors could be at play here. For one, I resisted referencing 2019 before because a lot has changed in the local broadcast TV space in these last six years. For example, as demand for news and other programming has declined, demand for first-run sports and Prime is proportionally higher, which might skew the timing of months like September. Additionally, whereas the broadcast month of October 2019 had one calendar September day in it, October 2025 has two.

But that’s how forecasting works: we find the best reference points, make a guess, and see how that guess pans out as we gather more data. If I could do any better than that, I’d have bought a lottery ticket ages ago, and someone else would be making these predictions!

So, with that detailed explanation of how my mind works, I’ve made the following changes to our forecasts. I lowered August a few tenths of a point, even though current pacing says it should be as much as three points weaker. I also raised September quite a bit and even tempered my estimate because I was concerned that the aforementioned changes to sports demand might be throwing off 2019 comparisons. It could be as much as +8%, which just felt too high, but I hope in a few weeks we find 2019’s patterns are right and we end up there!

Q3 vs. 2024:

·       -11.1% for July – up 2.5 points from last week

·       -12.3% for August – down 0.3 points from last week

·        +4.7% for September  – up 4.0 points from last week

·       -6.1% for the quarter – up 2.1 points from last week

Q4 vs. 2024:

·       Q4: +1.7% – flat to last week

·       2025: -4.9% – up 0.6 points from last week