• by Wayne Friedman , March 22, 2006

In a seemingly surprising move, CBS Corp. picked Initiative Media to handle its media buying and planning of its $130 million account.

Initiative Media won out over Carat USA, the CBS incumbent for eight years, and Omnicom's OMD USA, which had ABC's network media buying business until recently. OMD USA lost the account to Wieden + Kennedy. The win is a shot in the arm to Initiative, which had lost major business in the last year or so.

The deal includes--for the first time--Showtime, now a CBS Corp. division, after CBS' split with Viacom Inc. at the start of this year. Previously, Starcom MediaVest Group bought and planned the media for Showtime. Showtime is a major piece of the entire CBS Corp. account. Only the CBS network spends more in media. It's worth around $40 million in media billings a year.

What is unknown is whether media dollars will be placed by Initiative for King World Productions or CBS Paramount's syndication shows, since a lot of local advertising dollars to support those programs come from co-op marketing dollars in which local stations' agencies do some of the buying.

Initiative will handle national advertising planning and buying duties for TV, print, cable, radio, newspapers, magazines, and interactive.

CBS, according to executives, wanted a media agency that focused on media strategy and planning. Initiative excelled in this area. Additionally, insiders say Initiative Media CEO Alec Gerster had a leg up in getting the account because of his experience working on a network account. While CEO of Grey Global Group's MediaCom, the media agency handled the ABC account for many years.

Alan Cohen, who is now executive vice president and managing partner of Initiative Innovations, Initiative's entertainment marketing group, was executive vice president of marketing, advertising, and promotion for the ABC Entertainment Group.

"So they have plenty experience with networks," said one executive close to the negotiations.

While the decision is a blow to Carat, it was somewhat expected that it would lose the account, according to executives. When Charlie Rutman, president of Carat USA, moved over to CEO of the MPG Group in February 2005, executives assumed the CBS account would go there as well--since Rutman had a close association with the network.

But that didn't happen. As a matter of fact, executives close to the situation said that MPG never even pitched the business. One theory had it that Rutman had a non-compete clause which prevented him for pitching the CBS business.

CBS executives couldn't be reached at press time. West Coast media executive Cheryl Lodinger, who ran the media review for CBS, had no comment.