'Friends' Finale Ads Fetch Record $2 Million Each

'Friends' Finale Ads Fetch Record $2 Million Each
Tuesday April 27 7:29 PM ET

There's nothing more golden than the value of old "Friends" -- especially when they're about to say farewell.

The NBC television network is fetching an average $2 million per 30 seconds of commercial time for the highly anticipated May 6 finale of the 10-year-old smash hit "Friends," the most ever paid for a sitcom episode, industry experts said on Tuesday.

That figure comes close to the record $2.3 million paid this year for a 30-second spot on the CBS telecast of the Super Bowl championship of the National Football League, long the Holy Grail for TV advertisers.

It also surpasses the previous banner buying spree for a comedy -- the $1.7 million averaged for NBC's "Seinfeld" swan song in 1998, which drew an estimated 76 million viewers.

What makes such broadcasts so appealing to advertisers is not only their potential to reach a huge audience but a "highly engaged audience," said Stacey Lynn Koerner, a chief analyst at the New York-based media and buying agency Initiative.

"The people that will be there, the people who really care about the show, are unlikely to tune out during commercial breaks because they don't want to miss a second of it," she told Reuters. "This is the highest of the high when you talk about buzz-worthy environments."

Intense demand among advertisers for a bigger slice of a steadily shrinking potential audience pie also is driving up prices.

Most audience projections for the "Friends" farewell -- 40 million to 50 million viewers -- fall far short of "Seinfeld's" conclusion and pale in comparison to the blockbuster tune-ins amassed for finales of NBC's "Cheers" in 1993 (80 million) and "M*A*S*H" on CBS in 1983 (106 million). The "M*A*S*H" finale still stands as the most watched U.S. telecast ever.

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Paradoxically, the "Cheers" and "M*A*S*H" send-offs commanded far less in today's dollars than "Friends" -- about $840,000 each for a 30-second spot when adjusted for inflation, according to the Wall Street Journal.

In other words, whenit comes to big-event programs, advertisers today are willing to pay much more for many fewer eyeballs. And that is precisely because mass audiences are harder to come by now than they were before the explosion of cable TV and the Internet.

"Media consumption is so much more fragmented that the opportunities to draw a large portion of the country at a single moment are few and far between," said Tim Spengler, the top network TV buyer for Initiative.

How much the sold-out commercial time for the "Friends" finale will generate depends on the amount of advertising NBC decides to squeeze in. Based on a typical sitcom "commercial load" of eight minutes per half hour, an average ad rate of $2 million per 30-second spot would yield gross revenues of about $64 million. With networks netting 85 percent after advertising commissions and other factors, that would leave NBC with net revenues of just over $50 million.

Assuming 12 minutes of advertising per hour under the same formula would net NBC closer to $40 million.

According to the Wall Street Journal, advertisers for the "Friends" finale include insurance giant Allstate Corp., beer company Anheuser-Busch Cos., automaker General Motors Corp., computer and printer maker Hewlett-Packard and NBC's corporate parent General Electric Co. .

Looking to make the most of the "Friends" farewell, NBC is concluding its 10-season run with a one-hour retrospective followed by the finale itself.

Later that night, the six co-stars -- Jennifer Aniston , Courteney Cox Arquette, Lisa Kudrow , Matt LeBlanc , Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer -- will appear on a special edition of NBC's "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" filmed on the set of the "Friends" Central Perk cafe.

The Emmy-winning series ranks as the most-watched comedy, and the No. 5 show overall, in prime time this season, averaging nearly 20 million viewers a week, according to Nielsen Media Research.