Advertising: With ‘Breaking Bad\' Approaching Its End, Marketers May Clamor to Buy Commercial Time

With ‘Breaking Bad' Approaching Its End, Marketers May Clamor to Buy Commercial Time

Ursula Coyote/AMC

Bryan Cranston, left, and Aaron Paul in “Breaking Bad,” whose premiere on Sunday drew the biggest audience in its history.

NO television show is hotter than “Breaking Bad,” which set a ratings record for the premiere of its final season on Sunday - doubling its previous high - and is headed toward a finale, on Sept. 29, likely to rival any in recent television history in terms of national anticipation.

The last seven episodes will almost assuredly continue the show's viewership streak for AMC, the network that carries it, and they may set another milestone, too - near record advertising rates for cable television for marketers vying for the limited commercial time still available.

Brad Adgate, the senior vice president for research at Horizon Media, said that when the series started five years ago, “Breaking Bad” faced some skittishness from advertisers because of its darkness and violence. That is long forgotten, he said, because of recent ratings and a huge drop in the median age of its viewers (now 38.6, from a high of 47 in Season 2). In particular, he said, the concentration of hard-to-reach male viewers, about 60 percent of the audience, has helped erase those fears, too.

“The ‘Breaking Bad' finale on Sept. 29 could be the biggest original programming cable TV event since ‘The Sopranos' finale in June 2007 - and those unsold units will get premium rates,” Mr. Adgate said.

Without specifying what those prices would be, a senior executive with knowledge of AMC's sales plan said that the commercials remaining in what is known as the scatter market would be sold based on the most recent ratings information, and the expectation that those numbers would grow. (Its viewership in the important 18- to 49-year-old audience bracket, 3.6 million, beat CBS, NBC and ABC combined on Sunday; total viewership was 5.9 million.)

“What's left will reflect the very high end of cable” pricing, said the executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss AMC's private financial plans. The figure would most likely reach the level that broadcast networks ask for hit shows, usually $200,000 to $300,000 for 30 seconds, a level cable shows rarely, if ever, approach, the executive said.

The executive said that “Breaking Bad” had already helped drive AMC's total take in this year's upfront market to record levels, approaching 20 percent above its previous high.

Beyond ratings, the aspect of television programming that has become a point of focus among advertisers is engagement - and few shows have gained the kind of passionate following that now attends “Breaking Bad.” AMC reported that Sunday's episode generated 760,000 Twitter messages.

That all this is happening on a show created for commercial television - rather than for one of the subscription networks widely considered more artistically free - is one of the most remarkable aspects of the show's success, and a huge bonus for AMC.

Vince Gilligan, the show's creator, said he never had a problem with being on a commercial network. “Writing for a network has been a great benefit,” he said, referring to his seven years writing for Fox's “The X-Files.”

“We learned on that show that you build to every act break, to provide a reason to stay tuned in. I think that's just plain good storytelling,” Mr. Gilligan said. “In some quarters, folks will turn their nose up at that and say that's kind of a craven, for-profit motive. I'm like: first of all, all of this is for profit. And second of all, Charles Dickens did it, too. He would end each installment with a reason to buy the newspaper the next week. Creatively, commercial breaks don't bother me at all.”

“Breaking Bad” has benefited enormously from exposure on Netflix and in other places where viewers could “binge-watch” earlier seasons (commercial free) and catch up to the story. But for the sake of driving viewer interest (and ratings), nothing has meant more than the steady buildup of new episodes each week, a format Mr. Gilligan said he preferred to the Netflix model of making all the episodes of an original series available at once.

Charlie Collier, the president of AMC, said network executives remained “big believers in the live event,” which he said was validated again by the enormous Twitter activity surrounding this week's episode.

“We saw these numbers and immediately thought, ‘We're going to need a bigger water cooler,' ” Mr. Collier said. “You feel these weekly events in the zeitgeist and the live show, again, is the primary event. These last eight episodes seem to be building into a cultural and highly communal television event that will stretch over two months with viewers anticipating, watching, discussing and sharing. It's this type of engagement and passion that everyone is shooting for.”

A version of this article appeared in print on August 15, 2013, on page B4 of the New York edition with the headline: With a Hit Series on AMC Approaching Its End, Marketers May Clamor to Buy Commercial Time.