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sales@spotsndots.com Copyright 2020.The Daily News of TV Sales Tuesday, June 9, 2020

TOYOTA FALLS 26%, AMERICAN HONDA 17% With showrooms across the nation shuttered by the coronavirus pandemic and a number of stores damaged in the worst civil unrest in half a century, spotting the silver lining in a limited May U.S. sales report can be tough, Automotive News says. Analysts believe auto sales fell roughly 30% in May compared with the previous year — a figure that could easily be seen as a win given the very real stresses on the nation’s economy from the COVID-19 pandemic, still-high levels of unemployment and widespread civil unrest that began late in the month. A full accounting of the industry’s sales in May wasn’t available, as many automakers have ended monthly reporting; the Detroit 3 and a number of other automakers will disclose their Q2 sales next month. But of the automakers that did report May sales, U.S. deliveries fell 26% at Toyota Motor North America, 17% at American Honda, 13% at Hyundai, 19% at Subaru, 24% at Kia, 2.5% at Volvo and just 1% at Mazda. While depressed fleet sales were a significant contributor to lower overall volume, retail deliveries — juiced by high incentives — continued to bounce back from end-of-March lows. In a letter to dealers obtained by Automotive News, FCA said its retail deliveries were off only 15%, though it didn’t provide total sales for the month. The seasonally adjusted, annualized rate of sales last month came in at 12.17 million, according to Motor Intelligence, above the range of forecasts — 11.4 million to 11.8 million — from Edmunds, ALG and Cox Automotive but substantially lower than the 17.4 million rate in May 2019. The SAAR fell to 8.6 million in April from 11.33 million in March. Thomas King, senior vice president of data and analytics at J.D. Power, pointed out that retirement-age buyers — those most susceptible to the most serious symptoms of COVID-19 — are largely absent from the market, as are those whose low credit scores have locked them out of the most lucrative incentive offers. Meanwhile, middle-aged buyers are returning, but those who lease are not. “Middle-aged consumers with good credit are what is keeping the recovery period going,” King said. And sometimes, the degree of pain being felt by consumers can depend on who they are and what they do, said Subaru of America CEO Tom Doll.

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MAY U.S. AUTO SALES WEATHER STORMS AMID DECLINEADVERTISER NEWS Kroger and Ocado plan to build three more fulfillment centers as part of the grocer’s effort to increase its online capabilities. Kroger said the newest centers will be slightly smaller and will be located in the West, Great Lakes and Pacific Northwest, complementing previously announced fulfillment centers in Dallas and Atlanta, as well as Ohio, Florida, Maryland and Wisconsin… Coffee company Blk & Bold reported a 1,400% jump in sales over the past

month, and the black-owned brand is now the top-selling coffee brand on Amazon. The company, whose products also landed on shelves at Target and Whole Foods Market earlier this year, credits much of the growth to the brand’s initial focus on e-commerce… Restaurants and retailers looking to expand into outdoor space as they start to reopen are driving demand for

tents, suppliers say. Walmart, Home Depot and 38 other retailers saw sales of event canopies and party tents grow 47% in April from the same month last year, research firm Edison Trends reported… Ikea’s slow embrace of e-com-merce before the pandemic has left customers across the U.S. struggling to track and receive their orders, accord-ing to The Wall Street Journal. Deliveries “now take more than a month to arrive and the company’s phone lines are clogged,” claims the article… Macy’s says it raised a to-tal of $4.5 billion, providing it with sufficient liquidity to fund operations and address business needs as the economy starts to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. The larg-est U.S. department store retailer announced the closing on approximately $4.5 billion of new financing, including its previously announced $1.3 billion of 8.375% senior se-cured notes, as well as a new $3.15 billion asset-based credit agreement... Dunkin’ is launching its first-ever ad-vertising campaign focused on employee recruitment. The coffee giant said its franchisees are looking to hire 25,000 new employees, from front-counter to restaurant man-agement. At the same time, Dunkin’ said it is partnering

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PAGE 2 The Daily News of TV Sales @ www.spotsndots.com

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THIS AND THAT The National Association Theater Owners (NATO) reportedly expects upwards of 90% of movie screens in the world to re-open by July 17 — the launch date for Warner Bros.’ international

espionage thriller Tenet from director Christopher Nolan. Disney’s live-action Mulan is slated to debut July 24. The trade group, which represents 68,000 screens in 99 countries, is pushing the optimistic data as global economies get back on line and coronavirus infections slow. No theatrical chain has officially announced a re-opening date in the United States... Half of millennials and Generation Z members say maybe to in-person shopping within two weeks of stores reopening, 36% are happy about stores opening again but are anxious about a resurgence of coronavirus, and 27% think stores are reopening too soon, per Vesta. The top retail stores Gen Z respondents intend to visit are clothing and personal/beauty care, while millennials’ top store choice is for baby products.

ANALYSIS: TRAVEL SALES TO RECOVER IN 2022 As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, demand for traveling dropped off significantly, especially in the U.S. and UK, two of the hardest-hit countries. That’s according to eMarketer, which says the situation is exacerbated by a halt in business traveling and cruise ships worldwide. The research firm says its data is based on the assumption that lockdown restrictions will ease in the second half of this year and demand for traveling will likely remain weak until a vaccine is available, which is estimated to arrive in the second half of 2021. This being said, a full recovery will likely not happen until 2022. “As summer breaks approach, U.S. consumers’ appetite for travel is starting to increase. But fears of infection, foreign travel restrictions and the desire to avoid a quarantine will keep most of those who pack their bags closer to home,” said eMarketer senior analyst Jasmine Enberg. “Domestic travel, particularly car trips, will be the most popular form of leisure travel this year, and that will depress digital travel sales in 2020 as domestic trips tend to cost less than international travel.” As a result, eMarketer estimates digital travel sales in the U.S. will drop by 44.7% in 2020, with total sales tallying $115.27 billion, a far cry from the $208.44 billion in 2019.

CONSUMERS ‘MORE OPTIMISTIC’ ABOUT ECONOMY Americans are growing more upbeat about what lies ahead for the economy, even as they brace for what they see as a rise in inflationary pressure, a new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York says. “Consumers grew comparatively more optimistic about labor market outcomes with earnings growth, job finding, and job loss expectations all slightly improving,” the bank said in its May Survey of Consumer Expectations. But the bank noted that whatever improvement there has been, key readings in the survey still remain “far below” where they were before the coronavirus pandemic took hold earlier this year. The New York Fed found households’ expectations of inflation on the move. Projections of where inflation will be a year from now jumped from 2.6% in April to 3% last month, even as expected inflation three years from now held steady at 2.6%. The report noted there is considerable uncertainty around the inflation outlook and households are bracing for “sharp” gains in food and energy costs. The New York Fed said consumers’ view of their personal finances remained “depressed” in May but showed some improvement. Nearly half of respondents said credit is harder to get, but the median expectation of household income growth a year from now ended a three-month declining streak, and climbing to 2.1% in May from 1.9% in April, the bank said.

NETWORK NEWS Electric Entertainment and Arrowstorm Entertainment say they’ll resume production in Serbia for the third season of The CW’s fantasy-adventure series The Outpost. Production was halted at the onset of the coronavirus outbreak in mid-March. Restarting production is a hot topic stateside as the industry, unions and state and local officials hash out protocols.

BUYOUT FIRM IN TALKS TO BUY J.C. PENNEY Private equity firm Sycamore Partners is in preliminary talks to acquire J.C. Penney out of bankruptcy should the U.S. department store chain’s negotiations with its creditors fail, three people familiar with the matter tell Reuters. J.C. Penney, which employs roughly 85,000 people, filed for bankruptcy protection in May after the coronavirus pandemic forced it to temporarily close its more than 800 stores across the U.S., compounding financial woes that stemmed from years of dwindling sales. Sycamore is weighing acquiring J.C. Penney outright or making an investment in the troubled retailer, the sources said. There is no certainty that the talks between Sycamore and J.C. Penney will result in a deal, which would require a bankruptcy judge’s approval, the sources said. J.C. Penney is also in touch with some of its landlords, including Brookfield Asset Management and Simon Property Group, about possible transactions, the sources said. It is unclear how much Sycamore is willing to pay for J.C. Penney, which is in the process of permanently closing stores and cutting jobs.

6/9/2020

Larry The Cable Guy

I think it’s a fair bet to say that no one

in America will ever refer to 2020 as the “good old days.”

The Daily News of TV Sales @ www.spotsndots.com PAGE 3

MAY AUTO SALES WEATHER STORMS AMID DROP(Continued from Page 1) “With all of the stimulus packages that are out there and the fact that, really, for most people alive, I would say their incomes really haven’t been affected just yet because — with the money that they’re receiving from the federal government — in a lot of white-collar positions, people really weren’t laid off or furloughed,” Doll said in an interview. “Hopefully, the economy starts to open up quickly and some of the Northeastern states start to open up a little bit faster, too, so that we can get back to some level of normalcy and

build this economy back up.”

ADVERTISER NEWS(Continued from Page 1)with Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) to offer store employees an online college education. The new “Dunkin’ Runs on You” advertising spots will provide a look at “the spirit of teamwork and community, distinguishing jobs at all levels at Dunkin’ restaurants, and the extraordinary

people who are proud to call themselves Dunkin’ team members,” the company said... Big Lots is the latest retailer to streamline customer access to e-commerce delivery by partnering with Instacart. The nation’s largest closeout retailer is launching same-day delivery nationwide from its nearly 1,400 stores across all 47 states where it operates. The new partnership brings Big Lots’ groceries and everyday essentials to customers via the Instacart platform... Kroger Precision Marketing (KPM) is joining a new shopper data program from a major streaming TV provider. KPM is integrating Kroger sales information with an offering for CPG marketers from streaming TV platform Roku. The Roku program is designed to make TV advertising more precise and measurable for CPG marketers.

6/9/2020

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TVB STUDY: LOCAL TV NEWS A TENT-POLE EVENT The marketing effectiveness of local television stations’ 6 PM news has surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, and a recent analysis of March Nielsen data conducted by TVB underscores that trend. The non-profit trade association says local news is providing even greater audience impressions than tent-pole programming and popular TV events like the Academy Awards. For brands and advertisers, that means opportunity, according to Steve Lanzano, the CEO of TVB. “We now have this great selling tool that you can reach an incredible amount of people on a daily basis,” Lanzano tells Spots n Dots. “You can create scale almost immediately for your message and for whatever targets you’re trying to reach.” Bolstering those media opportunities is the fact that during such a critical economic and social moment, local TV is routinely the top medium for trust and local news and information, according to viewing audiences surveyed by GfK. TVB’s analysis of audience impressions from March shows the aggregate evening news audience far surpasses many popular broadcast and cable programs, including award shows and sports. The evening news is also delivering three times as many adult viewers compared to major cable news networks. In TVB’s research, a single spot running during the average weekday 6 PM local news across the seven network affiliates delivered 29 million cumed impressions compared to 9.2 million generated during the same period, in the same markets, on cable news. That tops tent-pole audiences for events like the 2020 Academy Awards (22.8M A18+) and the 2019 College Football Championship (17.9M A18+). The data comes as a growing number of advertisers shift away from the crisis messaging associated with COVID-19. (TVB’s study was conducted prior to the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.) “I think the messaging is starting to evolve now, and really, the bottom line is to make advertisers comfortable that it’s ok to advertise,” Lanzano said. “It’s not looked at as a negative. In fact, there are studies out showing that people want to see advertising. They feel it’s part of their normal… whatever ‘normal’ means now.”

RESTAURANTS REHIRED 1.4M WORKERS IN MAY The restaurant industry brought back 1.37 million workers in May, according to newly released federal employment data, as consumers began eating out again and operators rehired workers furloughed in March and April to comply with federal stimulus loan requirements, Restaurant Business reports. Yet the industry remains far below employment levels from before the coronavirus pandemic, suggesting that it could be years before the number of workers lost over that six-week period are fully regained. The restaurant industry employed 7.6 million workers in May, up 22% from April’s decades-long low of 6.3 million. It is still 37% below February levels, or about 4.4 million employees.