Big advertisers from General Motors Co. to PepsiCo Inc. to General Mills Inc. are seeking to walk back spending commitments they made to broadcast and cable networks, a dynamic that is testing the industry’s five-decade-old way of doing business. TV ad spending fell in the initial weeks of the coronavirus pandemic, but was insulated from an even bigger drop. That is because the majority of the roughly $42 billion spent on national TV ads in the U.S. is bound by contractual commitments that are made well in advance of a new...

Source: Wall Street Journal May 12, 2020 15:46 UTC