Interesting development for newspapers and magazines: take a look at this story from Bloomberg.com on who has taken the place of auto manufacturers in television advertising:

Across the U.S., the price of an average 30-second local TV commercial tumbled as much as 20 percent last year from 2007, according to the Television Bureau of Advertising, a New York- based trade organization. Auto ad revenue at local stations, down a fifth in 2008 from the year before, plunged another 52 percent in the first quarter, the TV Bureau said.

“A lot of local retailers, like the portrait shop or the pet store, haven’t advertised on TV before because they think they can’t afford it,” said Robert Prather, president of Atlanta-based Gray. “We’re out just beating bushes that we should have been doing a long time ago.”

The price of an average 30-second ad placed on a local TV station last year ranged from $6.66 per 1,000 viewer homes in the early morning to $27.29 in prime time, according to the TV Bureau. Prime hours, when stations usually have their largest audience, are generally 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. In 2007, the same rates were $8.09 and $34.12, the bureau said.

But don't worry, they got someone from the NAA to say that lower costs from TV stations, isn't impacting print publications.

“I haven’t seen anyone who says they’re losing local advertisers to local television,” Mort Goldstrom, the vice president of advertising for the Newspaper Association of America, said in an interview. “Our losses have come in other areas,” such as classified real estate and job ads, he said.

Somehow, I don't think that Mort spends much time trying to sell ads.