• by April 20, 2006

UP, UP, AND AWAY -- We're feeling a little uppity today, so we have to confess, we stopped counting the number of upfront events a long time ago. We also stopped going to many of them. Mainly because there are too many of them. Time was when an upfront meant something special. There were just a handful of networks. And you had to be someone important to be invited into the club. Nowadays everyone's fronting an upfront. Every micro channel. And not just broadcast and cable networks, but satellite, broadband, and place-based TV channels. Other media too. You've got everyone from ABC to the Wal-mart channel competing for a share of upfront voice. And as the competition grows noisier and more plentiful, the events are growing into increasingly bigger extravaganzas. It's no longer enough to trot out your stars, spin some Nielsen runs, show a few clips, and pay for a few drinks. Upfronts are no longer about the shows. They're now about the show.

Recently, Turner's upfront featured performances by Lenny Kravitz and comedian Kevin James. MTV will have the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Last year, Court TV hosted a few of its closest advertising friends to a private showing at the Met and a presentation by Colin Powell. The rule today: If you don't schmooze, you're gonna lose. Frankly, we prefer the old days when cable networks had little one-on-some luncheons. They were more intimate and more conducive to communicating their programming and promotional attributes. And the big events were left for the big networks.

Don't get us wrong, it's not that we don't like being whined and dined. It's just a matter of time. Upfronts have turned into a seasonal, part-time job, stretching from about the end of NATPE in late January to network Hell Week at the end of May. But what really worries us isn't the current state of upfront clutter. It's where it will be heading in the years to come. The proliferation of new broadband channels, video file sharing services, and video aggregators, will increasingly be competing with traditional TV channels, stretching the upfront into something that will ultimately will need to be redubbed the "allaround."

But at least one fledgling player appears to be acknowledging the problem and may have found the first elegant solution to it. One that ironically utilizes broadband as its means. Recognizing how tough it might be to get ad execs, or at the very least ad trade reporters, to show up for its upfront sales pitch Wednesday night, the spunky marketing team at CSTV hit upon a brilliant, albeit compromised solution: It hosted a live webcast of the affair online for those too busy to show up at the network's Fieldhouse Studio at the Chelsea Piers in Manhattan.

"This, we believe, is another first from CSTV," said CSTV spokesman Keith Marder, adding that even if we were too busy to "attend" the live webcast, CSTV will keep it "archived for future enjoyment."

So if you want to check out the industry's first broadband upfront presentation of a fledgling college sports cable TV network, set our browser to these coordinates: http://www.cstv.com/upfront. And try using our ID (cstvmedia) and password (upfront2006).