Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, February 5, 1991                   TAG: 9102050087
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JEFFRY SCOTT COX NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: ATLANTA                                LENGTH: Short

CNN RAISES AD RATES AS MORE VIEWERS TUNE IN FOR WAR NEWS

Advertising executives said Tuesday that CNN is charging about 20 percent more across the board for ads than it did before the United States and its allies attacked Iraq Jan. 17. The cost of prime-time ads on CNN has jumped 570 percent.

Executives of Atlanta-based TBS downplayed the price increases, declining to reveal exact figures. "Advertisers are being asked to pay for audience delivery," said TBS spokesman Michael Oglesby. And that audience is eight times larger than before the war.

Costs, too, have risen for the network as it covers the distant war.

"It shouldn't come across as them exploiting the war," said Hank Cohen, a vice president of KSL Media Inc. in New York, which has bought time on CNN for such clients as Dannon Yogurt. "It's supply and demand. Advertisers want to place more business on CNN because their ratings are up. And they don't have as much inventory."

Steve Sternberg of Bozell Inc. in New York said CNN will have a hard time selling advertisers on the price increases. "Those ratings are going to begin to drop," he said. "Their ratings always go up when there is a big news event."