S&P: WGA Strike May Force Advertisers To Pull Out

S&P: WGA Strike May Force Advertisers To Pull Out

The Hollywood writers strike may prompt television advertisers to cancel purchases or demand additional spots to compensate for declining ratings, Standard & Poor's said in a report.

A prolonged strike is likely to damage ratings as networks substitute reruns and reality programs for popular shows, driving down the value of commercial time, S&P credit analyst Heather Goodchild in New York wrote yesterday.

The strike, the first in almost two decades, forced CBS to air repeats of ``Late Night With David Letterman,'' and NBC's ``The Tonight Show With Jay Leno'' did the same. Prime-time dramas and comedies will be affected if the strike that began yesterday continues past the holidays, when networks start to run out of scripts, Goodchild said.

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