The Upfront's Early Years

Despite its myriad changes and the changing world around it, the basic principles of the upfront have stayed pretty much the same: a marketplace so powerful that not even the vast suction of the Internet can throw it off its moneymaking track. Bottom line, its central, age-old premise--price as a function of supply and demand--persists.

What has changed, of course, is the annual bazaar's dynamics. In a three-network universe, sellers had the latitude to lay out all their goods behind glass and set as high a price as they thought the market would bear. If you were a buyer or client and you didn't like the cost, you could gather your forms and take your business back to radio. But the proliferation of top-tier cable nets has ensured that there is no such animal as a "must buy"--at least in theory.

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