The game's in HD. Why aren't the ads?
High production costs, few viewers make it tough sell
For people who watch Sunday's Super Bowl on high-definition TV sets, the commercials will look as sharp and lifelike as the game itself -- except when they don't.
Despite the Super Bowl's reputation as the nation's top venue for TV advertising, some ads for the game will not be broadcast in HD. That could mean a jarring visual experience for football fans with HD sets, who'll sometimes switch from crisp, wide-screen game images to fuzzy-looking ads that won't even fill the screen.
Still, the Super Bowl attracts a much sharper-looking selection of commercials than other high-definition broadcasts. Broadcasting & Cable magazine reported last year that only about 20 percent of TV ads were in HD. But in last year's Super Bowl, broadcast over the ABC television network, over half the ads were in high-definition, and that number will probably increase in 2007.
"The majority of the commercials are in HD," said LesleyAnne Wade , vice president of communications for CBS Sports, which will broadcast the game this year.
Apart from Super Bowl Sunday, HD ads remain a tough sell, because less than 10 percent of US households watch HDTV programming, according to the market research firm In-Stat. Twice as many households actually own an HDTV, but many owners don't use them to watch high-definition programs. In-Stat analyst Mike Paxton said that some owners balk at the extra cost of high-definition satellite or cable service, or are satisfied with the look of standard broadcasts on their new sets.
Still, the number of HDTV viewers keeps growing. The National Retail Federation found that 2.5 million Americans plan to buy an HD set to watch this year's Super Bowl. In addition, many who don't own HD sets will watch the game at parties, bars, and other locations that offer high-definition viewing.
Why aren't more ads in high definition? Money. Bill Goodell, executive vice president at the Boston ad agency Arnold, said that HD rendering "can double, triple, or quadruple the budget sometimes," but only for ads featuring the most lavish and costly visual effects. For more down-to-earth commercials, "it's a minimal increase in cost"--about 10 percent more than a non-HD ad.
Lori Joseph , director of business advertising at Sprint Nextel Corp., said the extra expense is worth it. "If you're going to be on a premier program," said Joseph, and "if they're going to broadcast it in HD, you want to be able to show (the ad) in HD as well."
Joseph refused to say how much it cost to prepare the ad in HD, but said, "It's not significantly more expensive."
Brad Adgate, senior vice president of research at Horizon Media Inc., a New York marketing firm, noted that CBS is selling 30 seconds of Super Bowl advertising time for $2.6 million this year. "If you can afford that, you can afford to shoot in high-def," he said.
But not everyone is willing to pony up for prettier pictures. Like all local stations broadcasting the big game, Boston's CBS station WBZ gets an allotment of ad minutes it can sell to local companies. WBZ broadcasts in HD, but its Boston-area Super Bowl advertisers are sticking with standard-definition ads.
WBZ spokeswoman Ro Dooley Webster said that as of yesterday , the station had received half of the ads it would show during the Super Bowl, and none were produced in HD.
One major local Super Bowl advertiser, Eastern Bank, said that skipping HD was a budgetary decision.
"If we spend more in production, we have less to spend in getting the message out there," said spokesman Joe Bartolotta.
While standard-definition ads aren't as visually sharp as their HD counterparts, the main difference is how the image fits the TV screen. Standard TV and HDTV have different "aspect ratios"-- the ratio of screen width to height.
Standard TV, modeled after early Hollywood movies, has a 4-to-3 ratio, but HDTV, modeled after the wide-screen movie format, has a 16-to-9 ratio. As a result, commercials shot in standard format don't quite fill an HDTV screen. Some will have borders, usually but not always black, on the left and right edges of the screen.
Others will have borders on all four sides. This happens when an HDTV set is showing a standard-definition program that was shot in a wide-screen style called "letterboxing," which produces black borders at the top and bottom, even on standard TV sets, said Jack Barry , director of broadcast operations and engineering at WBZ.
Viewers of standard-definition sets will notice a difference when the network runs an ad shot in HD. They'll see the familiar letterbox effect--black borders at the top and bottom of the screen. Since some standard-definition ads also use this style, many viewers will hardly notice.
Eventually, all commercials will be in HD, along with everything else. A federal mandate requires that all US television broadcasters abandon analog technology and move to digital broadcasting by February 2009.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com. 