Baseball Advertisers Prefer To Balk

Beyond dropped balls, inept double plays and a rotund Pedro Borbon, replacement baseball now means lost advertising. If replacement players open the season, 95 percent of the MSG Network’s advertisers will stay out.

Some advertisers on the New York-based cable television network have refused offers of free advertising to stay in.

“They’d rather wait until the strike is over than be part of replacement baseball,” said Jim Liberatore, MSG’s acting head of sales. “A lot have unions and if they buy time, they’d look like they’re crossing picket lines.”

Liberatore said MSG has allowed long-term sponsors to pull out of commercial commitments in anticipation that major leaguers will return with enough time left in the season for the network to run all contracted advertising.

He said the advertisers who are balking at Yankees games have not had commercials shifted to valuable, nearly sold-out Knicks and Rangers games.

Advertisers know that replacement baseball will yield only a small percentage of the ratings they desire, and they would rather spend their money in other areas that yield the same male 18-to-49 viewer that baseball does.

“Replacement players aren’t legitimate and the public isn’t buying into it,” said David Ianucci of McCannErickson, the account supervisor for the local GMC Truck dealers. He said dealers were sensitive to the union issue, “but the main consideration was the legitimacy of all this.”

“We will not fuel the fire by advertising on replacement baseball,” said Larry Goetz, of the Midas Muffler dealers local advertising committee, which won’t purchase time on Yankees games or Mets games on WWOR-TV/ Channel 9 or SportsChannel. “We’re in business. We’re real. Replacement baseball isn’t.”

Chemical Bank is negotiating its sponsorship agreement with the Mets, which includes signage at Shea Stadium. Separately, it wants dramatically lower rates for TV commercials. “The only formula to renegotiate our costs is based on lower attendance and the cost of tickets,” said Charles McCabe, Chemical’s executive vice president. “If ticket prices are down one-third, that’s what we’d look for. If we buy spots, we’d look for the same thing.”

Last year, Chemical purchased $1 million in TV time on Mets games.

At SportsChannel, some advertisers have asked for rate reductions and escape clauses should the replacements remain. “Nobody has canceled but five or six long-term sponsors are asking what our rates will be,” said Mike Baer, a SportsChannel vice president. “By March 15, we’ll see what numbers are.”

At WFAN-AM, which carries Mets games, the situation “is not good,” said Joel Hollander, the station’s vice president and general manager. “All hell will break loose at the end of the month if replacements are still playing.”

Nationally, ESPN’s slate of 77 telecasts starts April 2.

“We’re not where we’d like to be,” said Ed Durso, ESPN’s executive vice president. “We’d like to be doing better. We’re not dead in the water. Many advertisers are hesitant. There’s a cloud out there.”

The Baseball Network is more fortunate: Advertisers can delay their decisions because TBN’s telecasts don’t start until the All-Star Game.

To date, TBN claims not to have lost any advertisers, has been writing new business - on a contingency basis - and has just raised the cost of a 30-second All-Star Game spot from $300,000 to $325,000.

TBN, which saw $100 million in business disappear when players went on strike Aug. 12, is prepared to make the necessary arrangements to keep advertisers happy, strike or no strike.

But TBN has been hurt: Texaco, sponsor of All-Star balloting, will keep the title, but won’t conduct voting at its 14,000 service stations, confining it to ball parks. And Gillette is ready to junk a sweepstakes campaign.

“When it became clear we wouldn’t have a normal season, we exercised our option and cut back significantly,” said Paul Weeditz, a Texaco spokesman.

Gillette needs the spring months to help market its “Strike Zone Challenge” consumer promotion. If replacements start the season, Gillette would cancel the promotion, and then perhaps junk plans to advertise in the All-Star Game, and then, perhaps, cut all ties with baseball for the entire season.