Nightly Business Report Needs A New Sponsor

PBS’ Nightly Business Report needs a new sponsor. Ad Age reports that A.G. Edwards, who has been sponsoring the show for 20 years, has decided not to renew their partnership.

The reason? A.G. Edwards was recently acquired by Wachovia Securities, who view the pricey partnership with the PBS show as a net loss.

NBR still has one sponsor, Franklin Templeton Investments, who will be continuing their relationship with the show until at least 2011. The show’s sales and marketing VP, Stuart Zuckerman, notes it’s a tough market:

“The PBS sponsorship model has always been about multiplatforms,” he said. “It’s never been just a media buy because we’re not driven by CPMs. It’s not commercial media.” Instead, he considers the sponsorship dollars to be a production-underwriting grant. “When a viewer sees at the beginning of the program, ‘This program is made possible by…’ that’s the truth. Without these sponsors, it’s difficult to produce these programs.”

But c’mon people… keep legacy programming alive. We need the Jim Cramer counterpoint. Badly.

(Image via Ad Age)

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