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NBC began its affiliates meeting in Phoenix last week by announcing a $425-million deal to buy two TV stations from New World Communications. The network closed the meeting by introducing an ambitious advertising strategy in which a time swap with affiliates could bring the network an estimated $275 million.
The deal to swap ad inventory, which begins next January and runs to 2002, is intended to help NBC defray costs for its coverage of the Olympics this summer in Atlanta. Under what NBC president Neil Braun termed a preliminary agreement, the network will be taking back 15 units of spot time from the affiliates--five units each from NBC's Today and Tonight and 1 from Meet the Press. In exchange, the network will extend eight prime-time spots to affiliates, four 30-second units each in Mad About You and Homicide.
Braun noted that inventory swap is in dayparts that are of "greater value" to each party. Ken Elkins, NBC affiliate...