• by Wayne Friedman , September 29, 2005

New York Interconnect, the largest cable advertising spot sales group of its kind in the country, wants to create a local spot cable upfront for cable network programming.

NYI, a joint venture of Cablevision Systems and Comcast Corp., estimates that 45 of its advertising-supported channels have high-profile, high-demand programs, such as MTV's "Video Music Awards" or FX's "Nip/Tuck," or ESPN's NFL Football--where national cable spot buyers could be persuaded to buy programming up to a year in advance.

This would be unusual in the world of TV spot sales. Typically, upfront deals--where media is bought for an entire year before a programming season begins--are made by broadcast and cable networks and syndication programmers.

Spot media deals--either cable or TV--are usually placed weeks in advance of their air date. Buying spot in upfront deals, months ahead of time, seems to be in opposition to the primary use of buying spot--getting commercials to air, in many cases, within days of making the deal.

Spot TV also allows the flexibility of allowing some advertisers to move around commercial units. For this advantage, advertisers can spend a lot more when buying spot TV versus buying national TV.

Ed Renicker, executive vp/general manager for NYI, says most buyers who traditionally make deals for big-ticket, high-demand TV shows already know way in advance what programs they'll want to buy next year. He asks--why not make deals sooner and get it out of the way?

"Planners already know what they'll be buying, and have flow charts with programs already listed," he said.

The move won't change the bulk of the way spot cable television is bought, said Renicker. He believes this kind of spot "upfront" activity will represent only about 20 percent of NYI's total inventory sales. To help do that, NYI will hire more NYI sales executives to spend time with media planners and account executives at the agencies.

Ironically, he says, this is how local cable was sold before cable spot sales groups had Nielsen ratings, beginning in the late 80s and early 90s. "We spent more time--about 70 percent--at the planning level. We didn't have ratings," he says. "We had qualitative research from companies like Scarborough."

To push this new effort, NYI is holding its now second-annual "Fall Preview" event in New York City at Gotham Hall on Thursday as part of New York City's "Advertising Week." Also at the event, NYI will announce that it is adding MTV2, Game Show Network, ESPN Classic, The Golf Channel, and Speed Channel--bringing its total sales capabilities to 45 networks.

Overall sales activity has been good for NYI, especially against their main competitors, New York's over-the-stations. NYI said it is up by double-digit revenue growth for the first half of the year, says Renicker. These numbers look good--considering that total TV spot sales for the New York market is down 5 percent to 10 percent from last year's advertising revenue for the first half of the year. Although NYI's overall revenue is growing, media agency executives note that NYI's overall revenue take is still a fraction of the revenue TV stations grab.

NYI covers the tri-state area composed of Cablevision's cable systems--mostly based in Connecticut, Long Island, and Westchester County, New York. Comcast Corp. has systems that are mostly based in New Jersey.