The world's media and advertising industries, already facing an advertising recession, are likely to see a further worsening of their financial outlook after Tuesday's events.

On the one hand, they will face the extra cost of providing a big increase in their news output, involving blanket coverage for television networks and extra pagination for newspapers.

On the other, they will face a further drop in advertising revenues as advertisers pull campaigns to avoid having their brands associated with distressing news.

US television networks have curtailed almost all commercial breaks to provide uninterrupted coverage of unfolding events. The MTV music channel dropped regular programming to carry a news feed provided by its sister channel, CBS.

Analysts estimate the total loss of television advertising revenues at about $100m a day.

Television channels NBC and CBS have yet to decide when to resume the commercial breaks. But even when they are restored, advertising is likely to run at well below usual levels.

Most of the world's big airlines cancelled or postponed campaigns after the four US aircraft were hijacked and are unlikely to return to screen or print in the near future. Other companies may consider it inappropriate to be advertising at a time when people are focused on the tragedy.

Another factor is that there is little point in advertising if consumers are not spending, and people are likely to lack both the time and inclination to go shopping when they are preoccupied with the news.

Some analysts believe the result could be to prolong or worsen an advertising recession already expected to extend until the second half of next year. But Doug Flynn, chief executive of Aegis, one of the world's biggest media buying groups, thought the effects could pass fairly quickly.

"It's still too early to say, but my feeling is that it's going to be measured in weeks rather than months or years, and that it's going to be very much confined to the US," he said.

Mr Flynn said a bigger concern for the advertising industry was whether the disaster triggered a loss of consumer confidence, tipping the US economy into a recession and turning the advertising slowdown into a rout. For Hollywood, which has thrived for years on action thrillers full of pyrotechnic special effects, the attacks have meant a short-term scramble to cancel film promotions and some new releases as well as longer-term soul-searching about what Americans will now stomach at the cinema.

Warner Bros has been rethinking the October 5 release of the terrorist- themed Arnold Schwarzenegger film, Collateral Damage. The film is about a man whose family is killed when a skyscraper is hit by a bomb blast.

Sony and Amblin have said they will have to reshoot the ending of Men in Black II because it involved the World Trade Center. Trailers for Spider-Man have also been pulled because they feature an image of the Twin Towers.

Additional reporting by Christopher Grimes

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