• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, March 9, 2009

Barry Fischer, who for more than a decade helped reshape Madison Avenue's perceptions of the value of cable TV, is out as executive vice president-market strategy at Time Warner's Turner Broadcasting unit, sparking a restructuring of many facets of Turner's research, marketing and media buying organization. In a memo issued to Turner's organization late Friday, Turner Executive Vice President Kelly Regal said Fischer's departure "closes a chapter" inside Turner, where Fischer was the key market strategist, visionary and ambassador to Madison Avenue, ever since being tapped by former Turner chief Steve Heyer in 1997 to help reposition Turner - and the cable TV industry - among advertisers and agencies.

Fischer, who had been the head of media at the former Wells, Rich, Greene agency, where he was responsible for clients such as Procter & Gamble and Ford Motor Co., is probably best known for a series of sophisticated research studies he oversaw for Turner that repositioned the way big advertisers and agencies thought about the role of cable vs. broadcast TV in their media mixes. The so-called "Media at the Millennium" studies, utilized what was then considered to be high-powered computer and analytics techniques to prove that advertisers could easily redeploy sizeable amounts of their network TV advertising budgets into cable TV without compromising reach and gaining better efficiency and market flexibility in the process.

As result, Fischer was a hero not just inside Turner, but in the cable industry at large, and his out-of-the-box thinking got him recognized as one of the 25 most influential people in American Demographics 25th anniversary issue. In 2004, Media magazine put him on its "People To Know" list. During his years on Madison Avenue, Fischer was known for his market acumen, as well as his strategic thinking. He also brought an intellectual approach to the marketplace, and served as a voice of consciousness for the radio industry, effectively blowing the whistle during the 1980s on a scandal that brought radio powerhouse RKO Radio Networks down.

The memo did not indicate why Fischer was leaving Turner at this time, or what his next step might be, but it said several parts of the Turner organization would be restructured as a result. In addition to overseeing Turner's marketplace strategy, Fischer played a key corporate role at Turner, and had effectively taken over, and reorganized its internal media buying group, which spends hundreds of millions annually promoting Turner's array of networks and programming, largely on tune-in and branding advertising. Recently, Fischer oversaw the shift of Turner's media buying processing systems to MediaBank.

Regal's memo said Turner will be recruiting a new Atlanta-based senior vice president to run its media buying group, and outlined a reorganization covering the rest of Fischer's research and marketing responsibilities.

"Barry's departure prompts some changes to the current media strategy organization," she wrote, noting that two top research executives reporting to Fischer - former Universal McCann research chief Susan Nathan, whom Fischer recruited to become Turner's head of "media currency;" and Knowledge Center Director Joyce Magruder - effectively are being folded into Turner's research operations overseen by Chief Research Officer Jack Wakshlag.

John Grill, vice president-corporate marketing, and his team, meanwhile, will continue to provide support for Turner's ad sales and corporate group's reporting through Turner's ad sales organization. Responsibility for the Tours and Stores areas will move to Alec Fraser, who also oversees the Turner Properties portfolio.