The Hollywood strikes have brought advertising spend crashing back down to the level of the start of the covid pandemic, according to data from private equity-backed Guideline – an advertising data firm. A second source, MediaRadar, has found that ad spend for talk shows has plummeted, with both channels and advertisers turning to reruns to keep audiences engaged. Guideline’s data shows that the new programming spend fell by 10 percentage points from May 2023 to June 2023, to finish at 20.9% of total. This means that the repeat programming spends accounts for 79.1% of the total spend, again, up 10 points. This is very similar to the spending levels when the covid pandemic began to bite. In July 2020, new…