• by Wayne Friedman , November 8, 2006

For the first time in years, the upcoming National Association of Television Program Executives January meeting in Las Vegas won't have a panel devoted to specific TV advertising issues. NATPE isn't unique. This follows on the heels of other TV organizations, like CAB and SNTA, cutting back on TV ad sessions.

"We had the biggest media-agency executives on these panels," says Rick Feldman, president/CEO of NATPE. "But they weren't well-attended. This year, we're going in a different direction. We are taking a more macro view versus the microeconomic view of a few years ago."

Instead, media agency and other ad executives will be seeded throughout its many broader business media panels--which will be announced officially next week.

For instance, on the first day of the NATPE conference, there will be a session about creating new ad-supported media models. Carla Hendra, Co-CEO, Ogilvy North America and President, OgilvyOne North America, will be a panelist. Another panel on video-on-demand will be moderated by Mitch Oscar, executive vice president and director of Carat Digital, Carat North America.

Panelist Christine Peterson, engagement specialist and associate media director, Carat Fusion, is part of a broadband video session. Ex-Initiative Media senior executive Michael Kassan will moderate another session on how to monetize content in new delivery systems.

Some years ago, when NATPE was going through its transition to a smaller programming conference, there was talk that it might focus more on advertising sales--possibly on local-station ad sales activity. But NATPE didn't move in that direction.

"It's not what we do anymore," says Feldman. "It's more of a TVB thing," he says, in reference to the Television Bureau of Advertising.

Instead, NATPE evolved into all things programming--network, cable, syndication, Internet and digital. A few years ago, it started up a special day focused just on the mobile business, called NATPE Mobile.

When the syndication business was young, national media agency executives went to the big annual NATPE conference to review new syndicated programming to determine whether shows were worthy of their media plans.

Some years ago, the Syndicated Network Television Association decided to take over these efforts, re-establishing a SNTA advertising day in New York. In addition to conference sessions and presentations, there were meeting rooms for syndicated programming and media executives to gather.

But three years into this process, the event was abandoned in 2006, due to cost considerations. Syndicators returned to one-on-one meeting with agencies and clients. This followed on the heels of the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau scrapping its national conference in favor of a series of more intimate individual meetings with agencies and clients.