Buying Tips Concentrate on the demographics desired and plan accordingly. Allocate roughly ½ of your TV budget to network TV buying and ½ to cable and independent networks. Take into account your heaviest seasons and begin your TV flight approximately 2 to 4 weeks prior to the beginning of your peak. Early morning news, evening news and primetime programming are recommended for network advertising. Cable programming on the following stations such as CNN, Weather Channel, A&E, TLC, HGTV, Discovery, and Lifetime perform well on a national average. Independent stations offer syndicated programs that perform well as reruns. These are usually programs such as Friends, Frasier, Will & Grace, etc. that air against local news on the network affiliates. Varying commercial costs and market sizes make it difficult to evaluate a media plan by GRP alone. A good working base is to establish 100 to 150 GRPs per week of your flight. Given a fixed budget, you must decide whether to emphasize reach or frequency. Some local cable companies cannot offer rating points on their local programming - they should not immediately be discredited because of this. Strategies for buying local Cable Place the majority of your budget in channels offering a particular programming format that draw the desired demographic Strategies for buying local Network Obtain the preemption rate Invest a portion of your budget in special features Run of Schedule (ROS) rates Package Rates